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Dustin is currently focused on building and growing his podcast community Board Gaming with Education. Dustin has experience teaching English as a second language to a variety of age levels – from kindergarten to university students. He also works in the field of education in various capacities, including consulting, research, and running and hosting tutoring programs. He is always looking for ways to create a more engaging classroom to develop a strong classroom culture to strengthen learning. This is how he founded Board Gaming with Education. He is the founder of Board Gaming with Education and the host of the podcast. He has a lot of support from his amazing wife Grace. You can find Dustin playing board games with friends, teaching, running around LA training for races, or at any of the “Board Gaming with Education” events.
If you want to listen to the full episode with Dustin, where he talks about his process, fail moments and more, find it on Episode 86.
Dustin has learned quite a few things about community building, especially with patience. In Taiwan, they started with just one person their game night and by the time they left their city the place had to say no to some of the people who came to play because they were full! Now it’s again back to basics for them in Los Angeles but certainly a stronger start. Are you thinking of starting a community like that in your area? Subscribe to our email list (if you haven’t already) and reply to any of the emails to see if either Dustin or I can help you in any way!
Since the last podcast where WorldsXP was in its initial development process with lots of experimentation, it has now evolved from something that started in Dustin’s wife’s classroom to something much bigger. The initial idea perhaps started with Dustin gamifying one of his university courses with a game called Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective this involved giving his students knowledge points that could be used to receive more clues in the game. You can find more information about this process over on Dustin’s podcast, there is a 4-part series called The Gamification Diaries. WorldsXP evolved from this with the aim to pack it into a kit that can be deployed to gamify any class. It does this by being a gamification guide that shows which parts are core components and which bits you can leave or add on depending on the style. One of Dustin’s favorite parts of the kit is the integrated learning adventures, students at the beginning of the process design a character and through the chosen design you can then develop relationships with other students and a relationship as a whole class. You can then go on different RPG adventures where you can implement different learning outcomes and reward certain tasks with experience or reward items.
One problem Dustin noticed when running the Kickstarter campaign is that the manual was quite lengthy and not all of it was required to actually play the game. Therefore he has developed a quick start guide so that you can get started more quickly and learn as you play. The project on Kickstart ultimately got canceled. In Dustin’s opinion, this was down to multiple factors, mainly the time of launch as November is a slow month for Kickstarted and as well as this it was at a time when not many teachers will have been looking for new learning resources. Dustin is hoping to launch this either again on Kickstarter or print on demand in the summer. Dustin is also looking for playtesters, so if this is something you’re interested in then send Dustin an email podcast[at]boardgamingwitheducation[dot]com.
Find Dustin on the Board Gaming with Education Facebook, Instagram @BoardGamingWithEducation, his web www.boardgamingwitheducation.com we can sign up to be on the testing phase of his gamification kit on www.worldsxp.com or on his email podcast[at]boardgamingwitheducation[dot]com.
We asked Dustin a question from the audience around managing the disconnect between learning in one style and been tested in a different one, there are a lot of insights on this one so check it out in the episode by clicking play!
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Looking forward to reading or hearing from you,
Rob
