Dr. Jamie Henke of Con­tin­u­ing Stud­ies is a cam­pus leader in online learn­ing; she has found suc­cess­ful learn­ing out­comes for her three games that fea­ture lively cartoons.

That’s a phrase UW-Madison under­grad­u­ates may remem­ber from their kinder­garten days, when they got their first expo­sure to com­puter learn­ing by using the pop­u­lar “Magic School Bus” online games.

The Scholas­tic, Inc. series fea­tured a zany teacher, Ms. Friz­zle, who blasted her young stu­dents to excit­ing des­ti­na­tions in her fly­ing school bus. Her car­toon class—and the com­puter user—explored vol­ca­noes, tor­na­does, and other phe­nom­ena as a way of learn­ing ele­men­tary science.

Con­tin­u­ing Stud­ies has its own Ms. Friz­zle (minus the red hair and wild skirts dec­o­rated with col­or­ful ani­mals and plan­ets): our inno­v­a­tive instruc­tor is Dr. Jamie Henke, who teaches music the­ory to under­grad­u­ates in an in-person credit course and to adults in sev­eral non­credit courses.

A cam­pus leader in innovation

In fact, Henke is a cam­pus leader in online learn­ing, hav­ing worked with var­i­ous deliv­ery sys­tems over the last sev­eral years.

“Online edu­ca­tion inter­ests me because I want stu­dents to learn where they are com­fort­able,” Henke explained. “My goal is to help these stu­dents gain an under­stand­ing of the mate­r­ial in a place that feels nat­ural to them.”

Henke also found that her adult courses are more effec­tive when stu­dents play the com­puter music games she devised. The games came about through an evo­lu­tion­ary process that began with pod­casts she recorded on the com­puter in her kitchen with the help of her col­league Dr. Alan Ng, Con­tin­u­ing Stud­ies’ direc­tor of out­reach technology.

After the pod­casts, it was a nat­ural next step to develop a learn­ing game. Henke was awarded her first Sim­u­la­tions and Games grant in 2008. Offered through the Engage pro­gram at the Divi­sion of Instruc­tional Tech­nol­ogy (DoIT), these grants con­nected Henke and Ng with a tal­ented team of experts in pro­gram­ming and game design.

“Over a period of weeks, we had lots of fun brain­storm­ing ideas about how to make the games interactive—and a blast to use. Our best inspi­ra­tion came from observ­ing stu­dents try out the ear­li­est ver­sions and revis­ing them to make them more moti­vat­ing to them. “       

Dr. Jamie Henke of Con­tin­u­ing Stud­ies is a cam­pus leader in online learning.

Dan LaVal­ley, a team manger for the project, pol­ished the com­puter graph­ics and pro­vided great screens for the game mate­ri­als. Henke cre­ated the car­toon fig­ures of com­posers that are fea­tured in the games.”

Games are effec­tive for all ages

Now that “Melody Mixer,” “Har­mony Helper,” and  “Coun­ter­point Con­struc­tor” have been widely used by stu­dents, Henke is con­vinced that games are a won­der­ful way to entice stu­dents into fur­ther learn­ing out­side of class. She has shared her results at sev­eral con­fer­ences and at recent cam­pus ses­sions in sup­port of Chan­cel­lor David Ward’s Edu­ca­tion Inno­va­tion initiative.

Along the way, Henke has also col­lected sev­eral UW-Madison teach­ing awards: in 2006 she received the pres­ti­gious Chancellor’s Hill­dale Award for Excel­lence in Teach­ing, in 2008 she was inducted into the UW-Madison Teach­ing Acad­emy, and in 2011 she was rec­og­nized as an “Hon­ored Instruc­tor” by stu­dents here on campus.

Now it’s your turn to try out the games.

Click here to have a go at it—and you’ll find that learn­ing music the­ory can actu­ally pro­duce quite a few chuck­les! (You will need Java on your computer.)

Henke empha­sizes that the three games are avail­able for all teach­ers as part of the Wis­con­sin Idea. Feel free to share this post with any teach­ers you know.

Did you try out Dr. Henke’s games? What do you think?