Just Press Play is a “gaming layer” for undergraduate education, which invites students in RIT’s School of Interactive Games & Media to engage in a playful way with their educational environments and experiences.
At its heart, Just Press Play is about exploration, mastery, and balance between the two. It’s about recognizing and reflecting on your achievements, both social and technical.
The project began with the idea for a student achievement system in the fall of 2010, and seed funding from Microsoft Research Connections enabled us to develop that idea into a proposal for a full-fledged “gaming layer” for undergraduate education. You can read our initial vision statement on our development blog.
In the summer of 2011, we received another generous gift from Microsoft Research Connections to fund the development and pilot the project, as well as to work with partners at New York Law School, University of Wisconsin, and Teachers College at Columbia to explore ways to extend the system to other educational environments.
In October of 2011, we launched the pilot version of Just Press Play for all 725 students in the School of Interactive Games & Media.
- Just Press Play website
- RIT Magazine article on Just Press Play
- Microsoft Research video about Just Press Play
- Microsoft Research article about Just Press Play
- My closing keynote from Internet Librarian 2011, focusing on Just Press Play as an example of thoughtful “gamification”