Gamifying a course, phase 5: Voki tour guides

Have you ever tried using a Voki? If not, give it a try - they are lots of fun!

I was using something similar to Voki years ago when they were called animated agents.  At that time, I needed a computer programmer, a professional recording studio, and a computer engineer to make everything to talk to each other.

Now, I just need Voki.

Voki is an education tool  - an animated avatar - that allows users to create their own talking character. Voki characters can be customized to look like historical figures, cartoons, animals, and even yourself!
 

Why Use a Voki? 

Nick, introducing students telling their stories about access

My original purpose behind using a Voki was to have Tour Guides to escort my students around their virtual community campus as part of a narrative device in a gamified course. The more I worked with Voki, the more I started to experiment with having the Voki also deliver some of the content, providing  students with a break from reading.

I am also seeing a lot of other possibilities for using Voki in higher ed. I teach  several courses in leadership theories, and students could demonstrate their knowledge and understanding of a specific theory through building a presentation using several Voki, having them interact with one another to work through a conflict or another work site issue.

Students could use a Voki for a presentation - using their own voice, of course .....  They could create a Voki to use for discussion forums....Instructors could use a Voki to describe an assignment or to demo a process.

All sorts of possibilities exist!

Positives 

I have found some definite positives in using Voki. First, I create a lot of videos for my courses. I use videos to welcome students to their course and to provide overviews of specific assignments. Sometimes these are screen captures, sometimes it is just me on a screen. I tend to use Snag-it and Camtasia to create theses videos, but then have to edit out clicks...and background noises...and start over when the phone rings or dogs bark or I start coughing...AND I have to re-record them again each semester with updates.

Janey describes community college athletics

If I use a Voki, I create a script, copy and paste it into the script text box (chunking text, of course), select a voice, and it's ready.  I don't have to worry about someone knocking on my door while I am recording or editing out a lot of noise. If I discover I need to make an edit or update a Voki, I do not have to re-record or re-design.  I just return to the script box, make the edits, save it, and the Voki linked or embedded in the LMS automatically updates, making revisions effortless.

Staying 508 compliant, I close caption all videos, again a time consuming process whether id do this in Camtasia or in YouTube. With Voki, I craft a transcript a first and use the transcript to paste into the script text box.  this means I already have a transcript of the entire content the Voki delivers, so I simply provide a link to a shared google doc for those who need to review the transcript while listening to and/or watching the Voki.

Not-so-positives 

I have had to learn to type phonetically because of the text-to-speech (TTS) function. Just because I know how a word is pronounced does not mean the Voki will pronounce it that way. When TTS works well and pronounces everything correctly, no one cares. When it mispronounce common words – or worse, names – it becomes annoying and possibly offensive.

I tend to create the complete transcript, then load it in a little at a time, listening to each screen...then trying to figure out how to make what I wrote sound correctly.  I am still struggling with the word gamification, for example.  Is it " game ah fuh K shun"? or "game-uh fa kashun?" I am working on this one.

Some of the voices are great and easy to understand.  Others almost mumble.  There does seem to be a way to slow down the speech, but I need to experiment with that a little more.


I prefer to embed a Voki rather than providing a link for students to click. This means, however, that the Voki begins playing immediately any time that page opens...which can become annoying. It's a great way of catching their attention, but...

Simulating a conversation is possible, but takes some planning as only one Voki can be used on a slide. his means that when the speakers change, the slide must change.

Lessons Learned

Stuart describes housing

Creating transcripts are very important as they guide the creation of the Voki .I learned quickly to prepare the entire transcript before beginning to design the Voki. The content of the transcript dictates the background to be used for each slide.

Prepare a background designed to mesh with Voki.  Some graphics lose perspective when uploaded into Voki, so I started uploading my graphics into Canva, then adjusting them to fit a presentation size. Those graphics uploaded easily into Voki without distortion.  Another issue regarding background design is to chose a background where the Voki  can look as though it belongs. This makes the presentation much more realistic.  No floating Voki here!

Chunk the content. When crafting the script, I started thinking about how to chunk content, how to break it down into parts to fit per slide. In Voki Presenter, each slide can have up to 90 seconds of audio....and that's a lot, particularly when delivering content. Keeping text to brief paragraphs is very helpful.


Listen to each slide for pitch, pronunciation, and speech speed. Listening to each slide is a form of proofreading. You will hear if you typed in the wrong word or repeated words.  Voki speech can also be a little fast you will want to follow the suggestions in the Style Guide  to learn how to slow the tempo. It is also possible to change the voice pitch to either high or low. I am an English teacher by trade, and I tend to automatically punctuate according to good, old fashioned grammar and punctuation rules.  Voki does not care about such rules. If a speech seems to run on, throw the rules out the window and use a comma to make the Voki "take a breath." Spelling no longer counts.  "Read" should be written as "reed"  or "red" for past tense.

Go easy on the Voki. Despite the ease of using them, Voki should not totally replace instructor videos and should be used sparingly, used thematically or a part of a scheme.  For example, use Voki to deliver announcements...or to introduce modules ...or to explain assignments....but not all of these in the same course.  Students still need to see us and hear us, and Voki can serve as an emphasis to assist us,not to replace us.  For example, I teach a course in Leading Change in Organizations and would like to share information about power-based workplace games.  I want to deliver this in a novel way, not as part of a forum or as an assignment.  I am thinking about  creating a Wednesday Workplace series of announcements where each Wednesday would take on a different power game, give examples, explain the detrimental impact of the games, and demo how effective leaders can handle the game. My thought is the Voki can really add a dimension to this series.

How might you use Voki?

Next steps - the early weeks of class.....

Gamifying a course, phase 4: MasteryPaths

I will say this for Canvas, their online chat folks are very helpful...and patient....

Yep....

And willing to spend lots of time with befuddled designers....

I have spent so much time with them during this process that they feel part of the family.

This week's discussion with Chat focused on individualizing student learning  in Canvas.....and using MasteryPath to accomplish this.

I had originally thought I would share an individualized excel spreadsheet with each student, one that details what their individual pathway would be, so imagine my joy to hear that every assignment and every discussion has an option to be assigned to specific students. 

Be still my heart! 

The primary opportunity for individualizing in this course (in this iteration...who know about the next time I teach this course:-) I already have some ideas) involves  the topic's readings.  After students complete their readings (labeled Reading Resources), they are to make an initial post in a discussion forum and respond to a specific number of classmates. Since this course is part of a masters degree program  that emphasizes academic writing, posts need to incorporate peer-reviewed research, so I want to make sure not to penalize those who have content knowledge by forcing them to search for new articles to read.

My method, then is to require everyone read a specific article or chapter, with pre-assessment scores then determining how many of the supplemental readings they need to complete. I then created three separate content pages, labeled 03-Reading Resources, 02-Reading Resources, and 01 Reading Resources....but I could not figure out how to connect them to a path...

Time to IM with Canvas Support....where I learned that only assignments and discussions can become part of a pathway - content pages cannot.

Sigh.....

At least that is an easy fix.  I can copy and paste the readings into 3 separate assignments. NOW when I am editing, I see this option:  Assign to. when i click on it, the names o each student appears, so I can simply select the students who need to access the various Reading Resources.

The trick, here, is that the course has to be published to use MasteryPaths...and, of course, I need scores to determine which readings need to be completed by which students. In getting ready for the course, however, I will simply create all of the possible pages needed, then link up the pathways once I publish the course and have assessment scores.

Thinking ahead to the next version (Mountain View Community College 2.0), I see where I can set up pathways based on assignment scores as well.  For example, if a student earns <90 on an assignment, I could create a pathway taking them to a content page with supplemental information regarding that assignment, then, perhaps if they earn <80, the pathway could lead to an additonal supplemental content page and perhaps a quiz.

Another thought for MVCC 2.0...When I provide assignment choices for a specific topic, perhaps the choices could be worth varying XP. If the student selects Assignment A worth 250 XP and completes  it earning at least 230 points, then the student could move to the next module or stop. If a student chooses a lower value assignment, with perhaps 150 XP and earns 140, then a mastery path could appear that takes that person to a second assignment worth 100XP.  Every student would have to complete 250 XP worth of assignments but would have the choice to do so with one assignment or two. I will need to play with this option later on....

ah...the possibilities... Now,to wait for pre-assessment scores to come in . . .

POST UPDATE (1/20/18):

The course is published, and pre-assessments have arrived, and I have scored them.  Now that I have created some of the MasteryPaths, I wanted to share how the pathway appears to the student.

In this instance, the student earned a high score on the assessment  topics of community college students and community college faculty so their MasteryPath for these two areas takes them through 03-Reading Resources, and they never see the other reading lists.

Completed tasks are automatically checked off, and grades are automatically posted.  Students can easily access their pathway at any point to see their progress, and I have used these pathways to check myself to make sure I have tracked them correctly.

Part of MVCC 2.0 will be to find a way to house and score the pre-assessment in Canvas so I could have the scores more readily available to set up these pathways.  Currently I recorded student names and scores on an index card and use that o create the masterypaths.

SUCCESS!

Next in this journey - using Voki Tour Guides

Gamifying a course, phase 3: Content development

I assumed that creating content would be simple...... After all, I had already crafted content when I taught this course originally in 3D GameLab and even have far more tasks than I plan to use (see phase 1), so this should be a matter of cutting, pasting, and making sure the links work.

Ha!

Once more, I discovered the need to immerse myself in learning additional intricacies in Canvas while re-working content.... then adding those tour guides. I could do an entire post on creating Voki tour guides....stay tuned for that!

My first content module in this gamified course is referred to as the 2nd Stop: Student Lounge. James takes us over to the Student lounge to meet Elizabeth who provides a very brief overview of community college student demographics.

Students then view the Community College Fact sheet from AACC, they review the stop's learning objectives, then watch a few videos of community college students providing heir stories.  Elizabeth returns to gently nudge students into the completing the next component of this first stop, beginning with scheduling a second Virtual Coffee Break with me.  I plan to use this time as a status check: to answer questions, to make sure they undetstand their tasks, and remind them of what is coming up...just a chance for me to make sure they are on track.

Now... the readings.... Remember my mentioning learning the intricacies of Canvas?

Student scores on the pre-assessment determine which  Resource Reading they follow. Students were scored into one of three levels on each topic, with 3 being the highest level of content knowledge and and 1 being the lowest level. I want students to only have to complete one set of readings, so I gave each one 50 XP and grouped them together as an Assignment. Unfortunately, until I have a pre-assessment score for each student, I cannot set up a specific MasteryPath, so that will have to wait until the class is published and I have scores to use... More on that later.

This brings me to the Student Lounge: Four Choices. Gamification provides choices for players, and I do want to allow students some flexibility in designing and choosing various assignments...but I also want to reward completion and stellar work with badges.....This became an interesting puzzle to solve.

Part of the badge discussion concerned levels of badges. I wanted students to be able to earn two levels of knowledge badges: a silver badge for completing the readings and various smaller tasks  and a gold badge for completing a more advanced assignment.  Badgr and Canvas, however, only allow for one badge per module, so to provide levels I had to create a second module. In the main module for this stop, I created a content page with a Voki introduction  that explained need to choose one option only and the graphic to the right contained links to each of the four options...available in the submodule.

Here is an instructor view screenshot:

I really disliked having to add a separate module to house these assignment options to be able to award a badge. The module has to be published so students can see the assignments, but then, to me, it feels a little clunky. this is why I added the text  explaining  this was a sub module.

It would great if Badgr and Canvas would allow us the option of awarding a badge based on Assignment Groups, in addition to doing so by module.

Canvas Developers, do you hear this?

Here is close up of the sub module showing the options and the rule used:

On to develop more content...and figure out if this all really works..... MasteryPaths is next. . . .

Gamifying a course, phase 2: Onboarding

To continue from the previous post, phase 1 ....

My first step was to create a new course plan:

Now I have due dates ... which helps me organize... which helps me plan.

My next step was to review and streamline tasks, beginning with Onboarding.

Well...yes and no...   I had to multi-task, actually.   While streamlining the Onboarding tasks, I realized I needed to develop my narrative for the course...so I streamlined...then pondered my narrative, then streamlined, then threw out the narrative, then streamlined some more, then re-wrote the narrative....

Whew.... and decided to frame the entire experience from the position of each student being invited to serve as a Visiting Staff Member of the fictional Mountain View Community College.  While serving in this position, their goal was to learn as much as possible about the various units to better prepare them for an interview in May. They would be introduced by a variety of campus tour guides who would take them to the various units, proving overviews, content, even introducing them to "students."

I discovered I had to become both linear and nonlinear during this stage of creating...keeping both the big and small picture in my mind at all times.  What an exercise for me!

Trying to approach this from the perspective of being a new hire, albeit temporary, it occurred to me I needed to, once again, re-frame the experience.

Students entering the course were greeted by a Voki who provided an overview and introduction to the course.

But what else do then need to get started and not be overwhelmed and confused?

Thinking like HR, I considered most community colleges offer some sort of social for new employees, so why not Mountain View Community College? I crafted the following text for the course home page:

 So... I have set the scene...

What is the first thing that everyone does at a college-wide social?

We check in!

So will my students.  When they click on the check-in table a flip book will appear:

 What happens after we check in?   We attend the Staff  Social where we meet our new colleagues!

Clicking on this graphic takes students to the Staff Social Module in Canvas where they will participate in a forum to meet each other and have their first opportunity to earn a badge. The student view of the Staff Social is as follows:

 I want to make sure everyone attends the Staff Social and "socializes," so I am requiring students to complete all items and earn at least a score of 95 on the forum to earn their first badge.

Here is where I started re-learning Canvas.  I say "re-learn" because I considered myself extremely knowledgeable about Canvas, but gamifying a course has taken that knowledge to a whole new level.  (Wait until we get to Mastery Paths in a future blog post!)

I needed to edit my module settings to make each module item required and to set a minimum score. In the Canvas instructor view, each module has a little gear icon to the right with a drop down window In that drop down menu, I clicked on Edit and create these rules to edit my module settings.  Notice that I selected a minimum grade required and that students view a particular page. Clicking on Update Module saved this new setting, and this module is required!

Now...to add a badge.....  Gamification includes rewards, after all....

Badgr provides a lot of great resource videos to guide us through the badge creation and award process. After setting up an account in Badgr, viewing their videos,  and integrating Badgr into Canvas, I was finally able to set up the logic for automatic badge award!

Now students will automatically receive their Social Butterfly Badge once they have "attended" and completed their Staff Social Module.

Me, as a Voki

Completing this module is key as it unlocks the next component.

What comes after the Staff Social? They meet their first Tour Guide, me!

I then take them to meet James who will escort them to HR for their Mountain. View Community College Orientation. Just as in a typical work orientation, they review policies and procedures (Course Overview), they complete the requisite HR paperwork (in this case the pre-assessment mentioned in the previous blog post), and they schedule a meeting with their supervisor (Virtual Coffee Break with me).

James

Next they complete a knowledge capture - what they currently ow regarding faculty and staff  to be used later in a course project.  They watch  several videos (History of Community Colleges and Issues Impacting Community Colleges), discuss these with one another (discussion forums), and read a few chapters in their text.

James then returns to escort them to meet their next tour guide at the Student Lounge.

Completing the Orientation is pivotal, as other modules ("stops" along their tour) will not unlock until the Orientation is complete..  While part of the reason is to force students into completing all tasks to help prepare them for success in this course, the other reason is to allow me to individualize their journey through this course based on their pre-assessment scores.  I need to give myself time to score the pre-assessment and identify a mastery path for each student. This means I need to schedule the pre-assessment as early as possible to allow me the time I need to do my part.

Originally the orientation module included a lot of other tasks, such as creating a blog, Twitter account, instagram account,and so forth, but in streamlining I decided to omit some of those tasks, and others will be worked in as part of task options later.

Now...on to the next two stops:  Student Lounge and Faculty Lounge  Content in part 3.

Gamifying a course, phase 1

I have finally jumped in to gamifying a course in higher education.

Well, I am actually re-gamifying a course I last taught 3 years ago.  I was, well, OK, with that iteration, but wanted to improve it after teaching it once.  It has taken me a while to plan and re-designing is becoming very time-consuming...

So I thought I would share my process.
 
 I have been reflecting and blogging about gamification for almost two years now, so it is time I actually take the first step.  To learn more about the journey, begin reading with this post.

The original version

2015 course map

I first gamified EDU 604 during the fall of 2014 to begin January 2015. This process took approximately eight weeks from concept mapping to publishing. Although I was using our Canvas LMS, at that time Canvas did not have the ability to provide badges, so I used an external program 3-D Game Lab to house my gamified class.

I really enjoyed using 3-D Game Lab from the design viewpoint, but I quickly discovered several issues I needed to address before offering this course in a gamified mode again.

 This course provides an overview of 14 different units in a community college. My goal is to introduce future administrators to as many different aspects of their community college as possible to help reduce tunnel vision and expose students to other departments. The hope is that when they are administrators, they will make decisions keeping in mind the other units in their community college and understanding the impact that each decision has on community college as a whole...not just their particular unit.

Forcing students out of their comfort zone and requiring them to network with others in their community college was the underlying focus of this course. Learning about all of these other aspects, however, can become somewhat tedious, so I thought that gamifying this course could make the subject more interesting. I also wanted to allow for previous experience, giving students an opportunity to demonstrate knowledge gained through experience and therefore opt out of specific units or portions thereof. Gamifying this course allowed me to more easily individualize the learning for each student.

Students first completed an assessment demonstrating their knowledge in these 14 areas, and I scored their responses awarding 10 XP,  30 XP, or 50 XP. I then created a badge for each of the XP earned, awarded that badge to each student, and that badge was used to unlock specific tasks or quests that students were to complete to earn the next badge, finish that unit, and move on to the next.


Students also were given the opportunity to earn additional badges, thereby being awarded points, when they set up their blog, created their first video, and for each virtual coffee chat they had with me. Earning three badges within 24 ours earned another badge, and completing and submitting tasks on weekends or holidays resulted in additinal badges and additioal XP. Positive behaviors were rewarded with badges.

Each unit could be completed at one of three levels. Students who completed the reading and for him only earned a bronze badge, equating to a grade of AC for that unit. Students who earned an additional 50 points by completing quests from a provided list received a silver badge (grade of B), and those who completed 100 points earned a gold badge (A). See below:

During their first week all students were required to videoconference with me. During this videoconference students shared their screens, logged into 3-D Game Lab, and demonstrated what they had already accomplished. This allowed me the chance to see where confusion existed and to help gently nudge them into the idea of a course as a game. My purpose in this was to make sure that all students understood the "game" process.

I was able to create all of the badges, create the pathways, design the quests (tasks),  and finish the syllabus all prior to beginning of the course that spring.  I also created a welcome video for students to watch:

What worked

 Quests/Tasks were simple to create, and badge awarding upon completion was easy! I was quickly able to learn how to use 3-D Game Lab, and linking XP earned to badge award was simple to accomplish. To keep from having unselected quests (tasks) stay in a student's to do list, I assigned all quests/tasks to expire at midnight of the Sunday when each unit was due. In my pre-planning stage I had made a list of all of the positive behaviors that I wanted to reinforce, and I created badges as awards for those. Such badges were awarded immediately without my having to do any checking or assigning myself. Very much a time saver!

Some quests/tasks earned a badge upon completion, while others had to be graded by me. When an assignment was submitted, and the assignment did not meet all of the requirements, students were required to revise and resubmit to reach their specific level of competency for that unit.

Some students loved this approach and worked hard to be on top and ahead of one another.

In theory, all students should have earned an A.

In theory . . . .

What didn't

Ah...where to begin . . . .

For some reason, not all students watched the welcome video, so they did not understand the course organization.  Several students did not schedule their first virtual coffee break (videoconference) with me until the second week of class, despite repeated gentle reminders to do so. Something this simple put these students at risk for the rest of the semester. They did not understand course instructions, did not know how to plan their time, did not understand how to navigate 3-D Game Lab, missed a variety of deadlines, and almost failed the course. I emailed and met with them constantly just trying to keep them involved and somewhat on track. Interesting enough, these students were taking another traditionally-designed course with me at the same time and demonstrated the same behaviors in that class as well...perhaps the issue was not gamification as much as a lack of preparedness for online graduate instruction and a lack of time management skills.

I set up my video conference Badge

In video conferences with several students, I discovered that several had never played games. They had never played bingo, they had played no video games, they were not familiar with mobile apps. They simply lacked experience in gameplay. Some of these students did quite well in this class despite lacking previous experience in gaming, yet others struggled throughout. Age was not a factor in experience with game play. Some of the millennials in the course had no experience while others did.

I believe the main issue here was not the gamified course as much as it was student's difficulty in planning and time management. This issue repeated itself with the students in other courses.

Another item that did not work as planned was the issue of turning off an assignment at a particular date. 3-D Game Lab did not have a setting for local time, and when I selected a time for an assignment to expire, it expired six hours before the time that I told it to expire. This meant students were trying to complete assignments that were vanishing while they were working on them. Sunday afternoons, then, were spent with me answering frantic emails from students who were trying to complete their last few expertise to earn a badge while trying to troubleshoot with 3-D Game Lab developers. Eventually I ended up having those quests expire 2 days later to make sure students had time to work on them the day they were due. Yes, I know they should not wait until the last minute, but. . . .

When a student read a quest and then decided to wait to begin that quest, that quest appeared to vanish from student's list. The 3-D Game Lab overview video that students viewed explained how to locate unfinished quests in their leaderboard. This tended to confuse students who sometimes assumed that if no tasks appeared on their screen that they were caught up, and some assumed they had completed the entire course in two weeks! Interestingly enough, these were the same students with time management and planning issues and who did not begin the course as quickly as their classmates did.

I used completion of the bronze badge in one unit to unlock the following unit. To me this made sense. To many of the students it made sense. Unfortunately for the students who dropped behind and their tasks expired, they were unable to proceed to the next unit because they did not meet the prerequisites to that unit. So part way through the course I had to create a special key badge to unlock a unit and manually award that badge to those students who were behind to keep them from becoming even more behind. Figuring out how to fix this took some time on my part as well as much discussion with the program's developers.

This resulted in a bifurcated class with students at opposite ends of the XP spectrum. Some of those who were behind felt as though they would never catch up, so I was constantly working with them to cheer them on, keep them engaged, and try to make sure they were successful in this course.

Forum completion badge

I like to use forums as a place for students to discuss their readings and their experiences as they can really learn from one another.  In 3D Game Lab, the forum option was open to all with no security settings, and students are unable to locate each others forums to post. To provide a safe place for a forum, I posted forums in Canvas. To try to make this less confusing for students, I created a quest in 3-D to for each forum. The quest specified what the forum was and directed students to go to a specific forum number in Canvas. The quest also told them to respond to two of their classmates in canvas and once they have made their initial post in canvas and responded to two of their classmates, they were to return to this quest in 3-D Game Lab and record the names of the students to whom they responded when they clicked on submit. While I hated to have them toggle from 3-D Game Lab to Canvas, I felt they needed the safety and privacy of a Canvas for when they were talking about their community colleges and their experiences. Some students neglected to return to 3-D Game Lab and complete the forum quest. Unfortunately, completion of the forum quest resulted in a bronze badge for that unit which, in turn, opened up the tasks for silver and gold badges along with the opening quests for the following unit. I found myself contacting some students several times to remind them to return to Game Lab to submit that quest. Eventually all of the students caught on to this, but it took some students several weeks.

Some students were two weeks ahead of other students which, again, impacted forum posts and discussion.

Quest Creator Badge

Providing choices is an integral part of games, and giving students choices in assignments gives them some independence and freedom and makes assignments more interesting for me to grade as I am not grading the same assignment completed and submitted by several students. These choices generated some interesting results. While some students consistently selected different choices within each unit, other students chose similar assignments each time, resulting in them not having as full of an exposure as I had intended. Throughout the course students had opportunities to create infographics, digital storytelling videos, proposals, narrated PowerPoint's, blog posts, reports, course syllabi, Facebook and Twitter posts, and many more. Some students, however, selected the same tasks over and over. I also provided a Create-your-own task where students had the opportunity to suggest to me a task they wanted to complete. Not a single student chose that option.

My mid semester, all students were caught up, or at least working in the same unit at the same time.  Some students,however, chose only to complete the bare minimum for each unit, resulting in a lower grade than their classmates.

Learnings

10 tasks in 10 days badge

Good habits are good habits. Students with strong time management and planning skills did well. Students lacking those skills did not. Students lacking those skills struggled in more traditional courses just as much as they did in the gamified one, so finding a way to strengthen those skills is vital to their success as a graduate student. I have considered adding a time management task to the course where students need to create a schedule demonstrating time allotted for the course.  Students completed a survey at the end of the course where they responded to questions about the gamified course, comparing their learning, engagement, and such.  I was fascinated to see that all students - despite their grade and their timeliness in the courses - said they preferred this course format to a more traditional format and that they felt they learned just as much this way. Go figure.

5 tasks in one day badge

Students need deadlines. At first I tried to not provide deadlines, but students stopped working.  Deadlines are very important to keeping students on task, particularly in an online course.

Early Bird Badge

Onboarding is key. Students need to be "on board" ASAP.  They need to understand the concept of a gamified course and their responsibility in saying on task. I am not sure how to "make" them watch a video or meet with me during the first week, but somehow that simply needs to happen to increase the chance of success.

Next Steps

 So...what's next?

To reduce confusion in moving back and forth from one program to another, I want to recreate the entire course in our Canvas LMS. while Canvas does now integrate with 3DGL, I had to pay yearly for using that program, so I copied and downloaded all quests and activities and have them stored, ready to use in Canvas.

In 2015, while Canvas did have a badge function, it was clunky and seldom worked. Now, in 2017, Canvas has integrated with Badgr to award badges, so I just need to learn the format and the functionality of the two.

I need to create a new course plan, and I want to streamline tasks, still allowing for some choices, but not as many.

More to come, so stay tuned!  On to phase 2....Onboarding!