Gamification... is it practical

The most significant point that I have learned in my readings of gamification is, if you do it correctly, it can be a great aid to student learning.  My biggest question is whether the differential in cost (time) is worth the differential in learning.  As an old person, born before computers were ubiquitous, it seems to me that this is a question we must answer.  If it becomes less onerous to gamify and it assists in learning then it is a “no brainer”.  Learning would be more engaging and therefore more impactful to the learner.  Otherwise, any time taken away from actual preparation of the materials or meeting with students may not be worth it.  Landers, Armstrong, and Collmus (2017) provide gamify elements and recommendations for adding them separately as opposed to developing a serious game.  It made the prospect of adding gamification elements to my courses possible.  I would like to see more research which would give instructors guidance as to which of these elements would provide more benefits for learning than costs.  Since, it is so time consuming and there is not enough research to know what works, it seems a notable risk to develop these now for the regular classroom.  In the corporate environment, where these courses are being developed for thousands of people by experts, it seems more feasible.

I think that the benefits of gamification are obvious if done correctly, aligning the game with the learning objectives.  It has the advantages of making learning fun and relevant to the learner.  I think this is exactly what all good teachers are attempt when planning lessons.  The disadvantages are equally obvious.  It takes time, technical talent, technology to create games that will meet all the criteria for learning.  My biggest limitation is time.  I come up with ideas and many projects that would make the topics that I teach more relevant but typically there is not enough time to execute.  I think that it would be easier in a larger school with many sections of a course and several instructors and support staff.  But, when you are teaching a course one semester a year, it is tough to gamify content.  In addition, if you have a course that changes, perhaps due to updates in the field, justifying programming a game is just not worthwhile.  As, I was reading the article on gamifying versus serious games, I thought wouldn’t be great to have software that would gamify any type of content.  The software Kahoot is one example, although there could be many features added to it and getting content into the software is still somewhat time consuming.  My hope is that in the future there will be gamify shells (somewhat like a slideshow software) that I will be able to add my content, select options, and have it create a game.  That would be awesome.

R.N. Landers, M.B. Armstrong, and A.B.Collmus, “How to Use Game Elements to Enhance Learning: Applications of theTheory of Gamified Learning.”, Springer International Publishing AG 2017M. Ma,A. Oikonomou (eds.),Serious Games and Edutainment Applications: Vo l u m e I I,DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-51645-5_21 

VR as a new pedagogical approach to lack of experience

I teach a course entitled “Accounting Information Systems”.  It is not the favorite course for accounting students.  Unlike many of their courses, in which they learn how to calculate and account for economic transactions, this course is conceptual.  The primary objective of the course is to teach them business processes and how to correctly control those processes. My job is to get them to critically examine how a process is done and ask questions about it such as:  is this process efficient and are there possible control weaknesses which might lead to errors and irregularities.  This is a difficult chore for students when many of them have very little experience in business.  I have often said to them, think about cutting the roof off a large corporate building, levitating above the building, look down and watch the interactions of all the workers and how transactions get processed.  Virtual reality (VR) technology might allow students to do just that, even though not physically possible.  They could walk into a virtual company environment and watch how transactions are processed and what controls have been put into place to assure that the transactions are valid.  This experience might be a good substitute for the students’ lack of experience and perspective.  Just as stated, in “Will Virtual Reality Drive Deeper Learning“ (Korbey, 2014), it would provide the students a level of immersion to a place they have not experienced.

In my class, I try to create experience substitutes by doing paper practice sets, role play, and case studies but VR could be used to create multiple scenarios and simulations with feedback to the students in real-time. The technology using VR could independently interact with each student and could provide additional work on concepts where the student is weak.  This is not always feasible in the classroom since each student’s understanding of the concepts can differ. In addition, the student is not confined by time, place, or location which would be necessary in a real corporate environment.  Also, it is not like a movie where the student is watching passively, they would have to interact with the environment by following a path or asking questions.

Although presently, VR is very expensive, it will not be long until it is much more affordable.  The reason VR is expensive now is that it requires a good amount of processing power.  Computer chips double in processing capacity approximately every 18-30 months (Moore’s law) and as they do the price declines.  This will make VR more accessible for use in education.  I am hoping that VR creation software will be available that will make programming a virtual environment easy for a non-programmer.  This would allow me to set up virtual experiences for my students.  This would allow me a new pedagogical approach to the course and course design.  It would allow me to provide students an experience that would help them understand concepts for which experience and perception are crucial.

KORBEY, H. (2017, JULY 14). WILL VIRTUAL REALITY DRIVE DEEPER LEARNING? RETRIEVED JULY 30, 2017, FROM HTTPS://WWW.EDUTOPIA.ORG/ARTICLE/VIRTUAL-REALITY-DRIVE-DEEPER-LEARNING-HOLLY-KORBEY

Social Media Use in Online Learning

I think social media can benefit a course by having the conversation continue outside of the classroom which can foster a sense of community, which is especially important for online courses (Meyer, 2015). It is much more difficult to foster a sense of community when people are not present in the same location and have informal conversations. Informal conversations tend to happen naturally as students come into a physical classroom. They have conversations with each other and with me. But, unlike conversations that take place physically, when those conversations occur on the internet in social media outlets, they are permanently recorded and are difficult if not impossible to erase. So, in attempting to recreate the physical environment; it is important to remember that many people do not like putting personal information out on the internet. In addition, since many use social media in their personal lives they may not like using these tools in the class. Using alternative, less popular social media outlets and software may be the answer, in addition to allowing students to use pseudonyms (Meyer, 2015; Trowbridge, Waterbury & Sudbury, 2017).

While reading this week, I got an idea for collaboration across groups for my graduate class. The students use data analytics and participate in a simulation where they run a political campaign for a fictional candidate. They collaborate within groups but it would be great if they could also collaborate across groups. There are four groups per island each with their own candidate. These four groups are competing so collaboration between these groups would not be desired. But, I typically have at least eight groups and multiple islands which would allow for cross group collaboration across islands. They could collaborate on strategies and uses of the data since they are not competing. I think this could be facilitated best by using a social media platform as there are multiple turns per week and the students could communicate text, video, and audio. I prefer to use tools that are easily integrated into the learning management system (LMS) so that the students can find everything in one place and it makes grading easier. Many of the software tools mentioned in the reading would require set up outside of the LMS. If the benefits of this type of collaboration on learning is positive then the inconvenience of not integrating into the LMS would be worth it. I am looking forward to reading more research on the benefits of using social media technology for learning.

I am very excited about a new social media tool called voicethread (www.voicethread.com). I have created an account and I can see that it would be very useful for students to share comments on videos and other types of internet media. I created an account and did a test using a video from Kahn Academy (khanacademy.org), I added comments both in text and in audio. There is a bit of a learning curve but I can see this as being very useful. The best thing is that it can be embedded into a webpage which could be posted on the LMS for easy access by students.

Meyer, L. (2015, January 07). 6 Alternative Social Media Tools for Teaching and Learning. Retrieved July 23, 2017, from https://campustechnology.com/Articles/2015/01/07/6-Alternative-Social-Media-Tools-for-Teaching-and-Learning.aspx?Page=4

Trowbridge, S., Waterbury, C., & Sudbury, L. (2017, April 10). Learning in Bursts: Microlearning with Social Media. Retrieved July 23, 2017, from http://er.educause.edu/articles/2017/4/learning-in-bursts-microlearning-with-social-media

How do students rate quality of online courses?

The podcast "Trends and Issues in Instructional Design, Educational Technology, and Learning Sciences, episode 90" mentions as a trend the increased sophistication of both online learners and providers of online learning.  They recommend an article that typifies this trend.  The article discussing a recent report developed from a survey of online college students reported that these students care about the quality not just the convenience of their online classes (Dobo, 2017).  As I read through the article, the author concluded this from the survey question which said that "60 percent of students who took an online course reported that they would change something about how they chose the course if they could do it again. Many said they wished they had shopped around more and contacted more programs before enrolling" (Dobo, 2017).  This left me wondering:  What would they change?  Was this a matter of quality or something else?  I ordered a copy of the report from The Learning House who sponsored the survey and is a software service provider for various types of academic software.  As I anxiously awaited the link to download the survey, I listened to the podcasters' thoughts on this topic.  They say that this article is a good recap.  I do not agree, the article is very short with general insight into the survey results or report.  It certainly does not relate to the title of the article which states that "students want quality, not just convenience" (Dobo, 2017).  There is nothing in the article that allows me as an instructor to know what the students would change and if any of the things they would change actually relate to the quality of the course.

Thirty minutes later, I am still waiting for the report so I look at the key findings on The Learning House website (https://www.learninghouse.com/ocs2017/?utm_source=LH.com&utm_medium=Thumbnail&utm_campaign=OCS2017) where they state four key findings:
 (1) 25% of students in online classes want to be part of a community; (2) 23% more online students are expanding their search to more schools; (3) 59% of online students experience buyer's remorse; and (4) 63% of online students are aware of competency based education.  The only finding that is helpful to me as an instructor is the first one.  At least a quarter of the students want more interaction and community building.  The other three could have various causes which may or may not be the quality of the online course.  As a researcher, I would like to see the survey questions so that I my understand the findings described both in the article and in the report.  Since this survey and report are sponsored by a service provider who has a stake in the results, it is very tough for me to take any of the results seriously.

I finally received the report.  It is 24 pages so I will read it and let you know what I think in a subsequent post.  If the podcasters and article writer had done their job and read the report (which it does not appear they did), this would not be necessary.  All in all, I think both were very misleading to the listener/reader about the results of the survey.  It remains to be seen whether the questions line up with the report conclusions and whether reading the report is worth the time and I actually find out the answer to my original question which is how do students rate the quality of online courses.  I will let you know.

Brown, A. & Green, T. (Producers). (2017, June 30). Trends and issues in instructional design, educational technology, and learning sciences, Episode 90 [Audio Podcast]. Retrieved from http://trendsandissues.com/.

Dobo, N. (2017, June 28). "Online learning: Students want quality, not just convenience", Retrieved from http://hechingerreport.org/online-learning-students-want-quality-not-just-convenience/.

Learning House. "ONLINE COLLEGE STUDENTS 2017", Retrieved from https://www.learninghouse.com/ocs2017/.

Characters for Scenario-based situations

I am finally making progress on my design.  It feels pretty good.  It does seem though that some of the details can bring the project to a standstill and what would seem to be a straight-forward task can add hours to the project. This has happened with me this past week.  I am going to have a scenario based video to set up the  motivation for the training.  I like to use illustrated characters instead of photo-realistic characters.  I am not sure why, just my preference. (I wonder if there has been any research in which type of characters work best and under which situations?)  Finding characters I like and in the correct poses has been very difficult.  I don't want to pay a lot of money for them but wouldn't mind paying some. There are not that many sites to find them.  The one site I did find and did pay (just a few bucks) has not allowed me to download them.  I need to call customer service but that will take more time.  I finally decided to use the default characters in the animation package because I have got to get on with the project.

Pilot done...now on to climbing the Captivate mountain

It is such a relief to have the pilot done and uploaded!  I probably overdid my storyboard and now I am having to figure out how to get the animations, which I did in PowerPoint, converted and working in Captivate.  Since my final course will be much longer than 15 minutes (I was overly ambitious as usual), I will just be completing an introduction module for this course.  I am hoping that it will meet the 15 minute criteria, it will definitely be longer than 15 slides.  I do not have a lot of narration for the introduction so I may be adding in more to meet the criteria for the project.  I feel more comfortable with getting this project done and have a better idea of how to complete it, than I did last week.

I am going to schedule hours on my calendar to work on this project so that I get this done before the end of the semester.  I am so looking forward to the break in May before summer school starts.

Working on my first Storyboard

I have finally broken through and have made some progress on my storyboard.  I have found that it is important to take one step at a time but keep moving.  It has also been important to have time to think about how transform the outline for the course into visuals.  I woke up this morning with several thoughts about how to operationalize the motivation piece.

I have decided not to use a script for my introduction and instead use music.  I am using a great website which allows the non-commercial use of audio.  It is called Free Music Archive and it is located at http://freemusicarchive.org/.  Here you can find all kinds of music and sort by style.  I picked a song by Forget the Whale called The Little Robot.  I am going to use audacity to clip the file to the length of my slide.

I also created a customized button to use in navigation by clipping portion of a spreadsheet using Snagit and adding word art and then saved it as a png file.  This will save a lot of time in recreating the button for every page requiring navigation.

7 slides down, 8 to go.