Who We Are

Steering Committee

JoeJHWeddingJoe Bisz, PhD, is a national professional development speaker, educational games designer and consultant, creative writer, and an English professor at the City University of New York (CUNY). His critical work has been published in journals such as Computers and Composition Online and Transformative Works and Cultures. His book The Allure of Play: The Educator’s Guide to Designing Games and Creative Active-learning Exercises is forthcoming in March 2023 by Teachers College Press. He co-founded the professional development group The CUNY Games Network, delivered over 150 presentations outside his college, and was awarded 16 grants. Joe has spoken to many educators and managers who desire high-impact pedagogies and technologies: game-based learning is the best tool he’s found for this mission. (See Joe’s website at http://joebisz.com)

julieJulie A. S. Cassidy earned a Ph.D. in English with a specialty in children’s and young adult literature and culture from the University of Florida. (Go Gators!) Prior to living in Florida, Cassidy roamed the wheat fields and prairies of Kansas, ate at Taco Tico regularly, earned a B.S. in secondary education, and helped her grandmother bake chocolate chip cookies. Her publications include essays on nostalgia, popular culture, Little Golden Books, and gaming pedagogy.

RobertDuncan_VR2_150Robert Duncan is an Associate Professor of Behavioral Sciences at York College, with joint appointments in Biology (Neuroscience subdivision) and Psychology (Cognitive Neuroscience subdivision) at the CUNY Graduate Center. Research interests include cognitive neuroscience, functional magnetic resonance imaging, glaucoma, neurodegenerative disorders, attention, learning, memory, educational technology, pedagogy, and developing games for education.

picture of K. OffenholleyKathleen Offenholley is a Professor of Mathematics at BMCC (Borough of Manhattan Community College). She is passionate about using all different modes of learning in these classes, from traditional lecture to data collection and experimentation, to games. Her research interests include online learning, equity issues, and game-based learning. She was featured a few years back on the pages of the CUNY math blog, talking about quilting, karate, and games: cunymathblog

Maura Smale is Chief Librarian in the Mina Rees Library, and Professor in Digital Humanities and Interactive Technology and Pedagogy at the CUNY Graduate Center. Her research interests include the scholarly and information-seeking habits of college students, using games in teaching and learning, open teaching and scholarship, critical librarianship, and educational technology.

Carolyn Stallard is a graduate student in the Ethnomusicology program at the Graduate Center, CUNY. She has twice been chosen to participate in the GC’s Open Teaching Initiative and currently serves as the GC’s premiere Senior Teaching Fellow, mentoring GC fellows teaching at CUNY for the first time. She works as an Adjunct Music Instructor at Brooklyn College, teaches music at an elementary after-school program, and plays percussion gigs and rugby games on the side. Her research on pioneers of the vibraphone has been published in the Percussive Arts Society’s journal, Percussive Notes, and her interest in game-based learning has resulted in presentations at five conferences, including the 2013 IMPACT National Conference. Carolyn is an alumnus of AmeriCorps*VISTA, through which she served for two years as a VISTA member and one as VISTA Leader, and of The College of Saint Rose, where she earned a B.S. in Music Education.

Screen Shot 2014-09-08 at 2.28.16 PMDeborah Sturm is an Associate Professor of Computer Science at the College of Staten Island, where she teaches undergraduate and graduate courses. She designed and teaches two gaming electives and introduced an area concentration in game development. Dr. Sturm is the faculty coordinator for the Faculty Interest Group in Gaming and Pedagogy under the auspices of the Faculty Center for Professional Development. She was the Co-PI and a Project Director on a NSF-STEM grant, “Science and Technology Expansion via Applied Mathematics (STEAM),” an NSF-funded program to expand undergraduate STEM education. Through this and other grants, she collaborates with members of the Psychology Department to design and develop research apps for children on the Autism spectrum.

Selected Publications

  1. Duncan, R.O. (2019). Confidence and Critical Thinking are Differentially Affected by Content Intelligibility and Source Reliability: Implications for Game-based Learning in Higher Education. Journal of Interactive Technical and Pedagogy, 15.
  2. Daiute C., Duncan R.O., Marchenko F. (2018).  Meta-communication Between Designers and Players of Interactive Digital Narratives. In: Rouse R., Koenitz H., Haahr M. (eds) Interactive Storytelling. ICIDS 2018. Lecture Notes in Computer Science. 11318 2018: 134-142.
  3. Daiute C. & Duncan R.O. (2017). Interactive Imagining in Interactive Digital Narrative. In: Nunes N., Oakley I., Nisi V. (eds) Interactive Storytelling. ICIDS 2017. Lecture Notes in Computer Science. 10690 2017: 282-285.
  4. Smale, M. A. (2015). Play a game, make a game: Getting creative with professional development for library instruction. The Journal of Creative Library Practice. Retrieved from http://creativelibrarypractice.org/2015/05/18/play-a-game-make-a-game/
  5. Offenholley, K. (2014). Online Tutoring Research Study for Remedial Algebra. The Community College Journal for Research and Practice, Vol. 38 (9). Retrieved from http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10668926.2013.803941#.VAzSzvldWSo
  6. Offenholley, K., Wladis, C, George, M. (2014). Leveraging Technology to Improve Developmental Mathematics Course Completion: Evaluation of a Large-Scale Intervention, The Community College Journal for Research and Practice, Vol. 38 (12). Retreived from http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/.U3DmnygXLcU#.VAzQk_ldWSo
  7. Bai, X., Duncan, R.O., Horowitz, B., Glodstein, S., Graffeo, J., Lavin, J. (2012). The added value of 3D simulations in healthcare education. Journal of Nursing Education. 4(2): 67-72.
  8. Bai, X., Lavin, J., Duncan, R.O. (2012). Are we there yet? Lessons learned through promoting 3D learning in higher education. The International Journal of Learning. 4(2): 67-72.
  9. Bisz, Joe. (2012). Composition Games for the Classroom. Computers and Composition Online. Retrieved from http://www.bgsu.edu/departments/english/cconline/cconline_Sp_2012/Composition_Games/compositiongames/Composition_Games_for_the  _Classroom.html
  10. Offenholley, K. (2012). Gaming your Mathematics Course: The Theory and Practice of Games for Learning, The Journal of Humanistic Mathematics, Vol. 2 (2). Retrieved from http://scholarship.claremont.edu/jhm/vol2/iss2/
  11. Offenholley, K. (2012). A Discourse Analysis of the Online Mathematics Classroom. The American Journal of Distance Education, Vol. 26 (4), 236-248
  12. Smale, M. A. (2012). Get in the game: Developing an information literacy classroom game. Journal of Library Innovation, 3(1), 126-147. Retrieved from http://www.libraryinnovation.org/article/view/182
  13. Bai, X., Horowitz, B., Duncan, R.O., Glodstein, S., Graffeo, J., Lavin, J. (2011). Designing Case Studies through 3D Simulations for the Health Professions. Proceedings of World Conference on Educational Multimedia, Hypermedia and Telecommunications. AACE.
  14. Offenholley, K. (2011). Toward an analysis of video games. Journal of Mathematics Education at Teachers College (JMETC), 2. Retrieved from http://journals.tc-library.org/index.php/matheducation/article/view/716
  15. Smale, M. A. (2011). Learning through quests and contests: Games in information literacy instruction. Journal of Library Innovation, 2(2), 36-55. Retrieved from http://www.libraryinnovation.org/article/view/148
  16. Bisz, J. (2009). The birth of a community, the death of the win: player production of the ‘Middle-earth collectible card game.’ Transformative Works and Cultures No. 2.

Complete curricula vitae

Educators coming together to explore how the principles of games promote learning