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. . . .