Short Description:
When you do a Google search with keywords “play in learning,” overwhelmingly you find play being utilized in childhood education. This lack of attention to play in higher education reflects the societal narrative that says, “play is for kids, not adults.” When play is associated with childhood or seen as trivial or a waste of time, utilizing play in “serious” adult learning can seem radical, scary, or reckless at most. The Professors at Play PlayBook challenges the idea that play is only for kids and presents a case for play and its value of play in adult learning. The PlayBook describes how the use of a playful pedagogy can reduce students’ barriers to learning, create connections, and awaken students’ interest and engagement in learning leading to deeper learning. The PlayBook tells an alternative story about play giving the reader permission to explore the possibility of a playful pedagogy in their teaching.The PlayBook is an anthology of almost 100 play techniques from over 65 professors across a variety of disciplines. The collection of techniques is organized around four key themes: the playful professor, connection-former or ice breaker activities, play to teach content, and playful whole course design. The chapters of techniques are nestled within commentary and a review of the research to provide context and an argument for the value of play in academia. The book features an introduction by noted play scholar Peter Grey and an afterward by play researcher Alison James. The PlayBook is an extension of the Professors at Play community, an international network of higher education faculty, researchers, and instructional designers who are committed to the transformational power of play in adult learning. You can find out more about Professors at Play: http://professorsatplay.org

Long Description:
When you do a Google search with keywords “play in learning,” overwhelmingly you find play being utilized in childhood education. This lack of attention to play in higher education reflects the societal narrative that says, “play is for kids, not adults.” When play is associated with childhood or seen as trivial or a waste of time, utilizing play in “serious” adult learning can seem radical, scary, or reckless at most. The Professors at Play PlayBook challenges the idea that play is only for kids and presents a case for the value of play in adult learning. The PlayBook describes how the use of a playful pedagogy can reduce students’ barriers to learning, create connections, and awaken students’ interest leading to deeper learning. The PlayBook tells an alternative and complex story about play – that is a seriously impactful tool that can help faculty change their view on and approach to learning. This book provides faculty with a deeper understanding and a framework for enhanced creativity and flexibility in their teaching. The PlayBook demonstrates that play is more than just an activity, it can be a mindset allowing academics to challenge the long-standing norms and status quos of education. The PlayBook communicates play’s place in adult learning from creating a sense of community, belonging, and engagement to a discussion of brain science and play’s place in the process of neuroplasticity. The PlayBook looks to provide a new perspective on play and give the reader permission to explore the possibilities of a playful pedagogy in their teaching.

The PlayBook is a beautifully messy anthology of almost 100 play techniques from over 65 multidisciplinary professors across the globe. The techniques are organized around four key themes: a) the playful professor, b) connection-former or ice breaker activities, c) play to teach content, and d) playful whole course design. The chapters of techniques are nestled within editorial commentary and a review of the research to provide context and argument for the value of play in academia. The book features an introduction by noted play scholar Peter Grey and an afterward by play researcher Alison James. Whether used as a reference for designing playful teaching, as documentation of the types of playful pedagogy available to the higher education professor or simply as a radical call to play more in the ivory tower, the Professors at Play PlayBook invites a fresh, and more fun, perspective on education. As of 2022, the Professors at Play community consists of almost 800 higher education faculty, researchers, and instructional designers who are interested in or committed to the transformational power of play in adult learning. The PlayBook was developed as a response to requests for not only more examples of what play looks like in higher education but also as a way to collect and document the amazingly playful work being done in higher education classrooms all over the world. You can find out more about Professors at Play: http://professorsatplay.org

Word Count: 109357

ISBN: 978-1-387-50503-6

(Note: This resource's metadata has been created automatically by reformatting and/or combining the information that the author initially provided as part of a bulk import process.)

The Witcher

Word Count: 54991

(Note: This resource's metadata has been created automatically as part of a bulk import process by reformatting and/or combining the information that the author initially provided. As a result, there may be errors in formatting.)

Public policy issues are important to every field of engineering. Yet, most engineering students know little about the topic. For most students, however, an entire course focused on the topic is not necessary. For example, a class on engineering design could incorporate a case study on 3D printing policy.

This course will introduce students to the interrelationship of engineering and public policy, how to conduct neutral policy analysis, and then apply that knowledge in case studies to practice the skills they have learned. The modules takes a flipped classroom/active learning approach by using short videos to educate students, activities to practice the skills taught, and incorporates real-world examples such as hydraulic fracturing, drones, and 3D printing.

To access this course, click "Enter Open & Free Course," then "Enter course" under "Enter without an account."

This course is design to support the development of foundational skills in workplace communication and mathematics that are used in various STEM careers. The course offers practice using workplace communication and math skills that are encountered in the workforce. The activities are designed to strengthen skills in preparation for entering a college program in a STEM career.

To access this course, click "Enter Open & Free Course," then "Enter course" under "Enter without an account."

The STEM Readiness course provides a refresher of core skills related to STEM careers. The Open + Free course covers the core skill of Mathematics from arithmetic to beginning algebra. The topics of the course are presented through workplace scenarios to show learners how these skills apply to their potential careers. In reviewing these core skills students will be better prepared to be successful in post-secondary STEM related technical programs and ultimately in STEM related careers.

To access this course, click "Enter Open & Free Course," then "Enter course" under "Enter without an account."

My Life and Times with the Artificial Intelligentsia

Short Description:
Pamela McCorduck wrote the first modern history of artificial intelligence, Machines Who Think, and spent much time pulling on the sleeves of public intellectuals, trying in futility to suggest that artificial intelligence could be important. Memoir, social history, group biography of the founding fathers of AI, This Could Be Important follows the personal story of one AI spectator, from her early enthusiasms to her mature, more nuanced observations of the field.

Long Description:
In 1979 Pamela McCorduck published the first modern history of artificial intelligence, Machines Who Think. But as This Could Be Important shows, she’d been intrigued by AI for nearly twenty years before that. She’d first met AI when she was an undergraduate English major at Berkeley, and became steeped in the culture at Stanford and Carnegie Mellon Universities. While she couldn’t judge whether AI was sound science, or would ever move from the fringes to scientific respectability, she was confident that the people who pursued AI were some of the most intelligent human beings she’d ever had the joy to meet. Friendships with the AI founding fathers, first professional, and later personal, laid the foundation of her lifelong fascination with AI.

When she and her computer scientist husband moved to New York City, she joined various literary circles, but faced impossible battles to convince public intellectuals in the 1980s, the 1990s, and beyond, that AI could be important. Drawn from the journals she kept, she describes those battles candidly—losing a university tenure fight over Machines Who Think (which was later celebrated as influencing a generation of young researchers), being flayed alive in the New York Times and the New York Review of Books for her heresies. She writes how she was aghast and then contemptuous of one celebrity intellectual’s ignorance, dismayed by others for their unwillingness to try even to understand.

Yet AI is here, and so is she. If she once thought that pursuing more intelligence was as unequivocally desirable as pursuing more virtue, she awakened to what, as a student of the humanities, she should always have known—that any human endeavor brings in its train the sublime and the ridiculous, opportunities for great good, and risks of great evil. In this book she also ponders the present, where two global super-powers, the United States and China, have at their disposal a power never before seen in human history. Neither one will get it right the first time. But with due caution, AI can be done right.

Word Count: 131107

(Note: This resource's metadata has been created automatically by reformatting and/or combining the information that the author initially provided as part of a bulk import process.)

My Life and Times with the Artificial Intelligentsia

Short Description:
Pamela McCorduck wrote the first modern history of artificial intelligence, Machines Who Think, and spent much time pulling on the sleeves of public intellectuals, trying in futility to suggest that artificial intelligence could be important. Memoir, social history, group biography of the founding fathers of AI, This Could Be Important follows the personal story of one AI spectator, from her early enthusiasms to her mature, more nuanced observations of the field.

Long Description:
In 1979 Pamela McCorduck published the first modern history of artificial intelligence, Machines Who Think. But as This Could Be Important shows, she’d been intrigued by AI for nearly twenty years before that. She’d first met AI when she was an undergraduate English major at Berkeley, and became steeped in the culture at Stanford and Carnegie Mellon Universities. While she couldn’t judge whether AI was sound science, or would ever move from the fringes to scientific respectability, she was confident that the people who pursued AI were some of the most intelligent human beings she’d ever had the joy to meet. Friendships with the AI founding fathers, first professional, and later personal, laid the foundation of her lifelong fascination with AI.

When she and her computer scientist husband moved to New York City, she joined various literary circles, but faced impossible battles to convince public intellectuals in the 1980s, the 1990s, and beyond, that AI could be important. Drawn from the journals she kept, she describes those battles candidly—losing a university tenure fight over Machines Who Think (which was later celebrated as influencing a generation of young researchers), being flayed alive in the New York Times and the New York Review of Books for her heresies. She writes how she was aghast and then contemptuous of one celebrity intellectual’s ignorance, dismayed by others for their unwillingness to try even to understand.

Yet AI is here, and so is she. If she once thought that pursuing more intelligence was as unequivocally desirable as pursuing more virtue, she awakened to what, as a student of the humanities, she should always have known—that any human endeavor brings in its train the sublime and the ridiculous, opportunities for great good, and risks of great evil. In this book she also ponders the present, where two global super-powers, the United States and China, have at their disposal a power never before seen in human history. Neither one will get it right the first time. But with due caution, AI can be done right.

Word Count: 131107

(Note: This resource's metadata has been created automatically by reformatting and/or combining the information that the author initially provided as part of a bulk import process.)

Book Three: Senses of Place and Space

Short Description:
Today, as the increasing accessibility, prevalence, and affordability of VR technology grows, so does a need to revisit theories of virtual space. Virtual Interiorities brings together scholars from the allied fields of built environment, humanities, art, and media. This collection of essays catalogs the moments of collision and collusion between parallel universes of spatio-visual media as they shift into and extend one another.

Long Description:
Contemporary virtual reality is often discussed in terms of popular consumer hardware. Yet the virtual we increasingly experience comes in many forms and is often more complex than wearable signifiers. This three-volume collection of essays examines the virtual beyond the headset. Virtual Interiorities offers multiple, sometimes unexpected entry points to virtuality—theme parks, video games, gyms, pilgrimage sites, theater, art installations, screens, drones, film, and even national identity. What all these virtual interiorities share are compelling cultural perspectives on distinct moments of environmental collision and collusion, liminality, and shifting modes of inhabitation, which challenge more conventional architectural conceptions of space. Senses of Place and Space steps beyond environments to look more closely at inhabitation, time, non-space, and placelessness. Each piece gathered in this final volume touches on how we exist—or might exist—in emerging virtual constructs, as well as how those constructs shift our perceptions through fluidity, pervasiveness, and altered vantages.

Word Count: 189719

ISBN: 978-1-387-49250-3

(Note: This resource's metadata has been created automatically by reformatting and/or combining the information that the author initially provided as part of a bulk import process.)