By Michelle Hines, University Relations
ECON 201 students take on the role of aliens who must make smart economic decisions to survive.
Singling out UNCG's new ECON 201 videogame economics course, Campus Technology magazine has named the university to its 2006 Campus Technology Innovators list in the Gaming category.
Campus Technology is designed for information technology specialists working in the higher education field. It has a readership of about 50,000, and received just under 500 entries this year for Innovator awards.
The magazine credits the ECON 201 project, a collaboration between UNCG’s Division of Continual Learning and the Department of Economics, with moving beyond a supplemental use of gaming technology to turn “an entire course into a game.” The course, offered for the first time this fall, revolves around an alien species that crash-lands on a futuristic, post-apocalyptic Earth. To survive, student gamers must make well-reasoned economic decisions.
“Games will be the next big advancement in education, because educators are going to learn how to tap into the power of gaming to teach and motivate students,” Robert Brown, UNCG’s dean of continual learning, told Campus Technology.
Campus Technology lists its 2006 Innovators in 16 categories. Southern Adventist University in Tennessee shares the Gaming honors with UNCG.
For more information on the Innovator awards, log on to http://www.campus-technology.com/article.asp?id=18945.
For more information on ECON 201, log on to http://web.uncg.edu/dcl/econ201/.
