Gamifying a course, phase 6: Early Weeks

All right...the game's a foot!

I wanted to share how the first few weeks of class are going . . . .

The students seem to be navigating the course well and are scheduling their first video conference with me, but  the Voki providing the Course Overview on the home page annoys me! Every time I log in, Voki begins speaking automatically, making me race to cut it off.  Now that everyone has logged into the course, I am assuming they have heard the course overview, so I have changed this to a link and rearranged the home page to include a banner as follows:

 Badge Report

One student completed the Social Butterfly Badge from Staff Social before class officially started, and the others completed it within the first week of class.  In one instance the module was completed but the student did not "pick up" the badge. To fix this, as soon as I see that a student has completed a module, I send a quick email to remind them to pick up their badge. This seems to help speed the process. After the one reminder, they are now picking up badges regularly.

The tasks to complete the Orientation Badge took much longer to complete than I expected.  Although the module was completed within the first 10 days of class, some students waited to pick up their badges  That is not really a big deal as I can award them once I see they have completed the module, but this does reinforce some of the research regarding external and internal motivation described later in this post.

I needed the pre-assessment results  as soon as possible, and the students, thankfully, obliged. The main holdup was one i did not foresee although I should have. Students had 3 forums to complete, and all three forums required they respond to each other as art of their grade. Students who posted in a forum quickly had to wait for their classmates to post so they could respond. As completing the Orientation Module unlocked the remaining modules or stops on their tour, this requirement slowed down students who wanted to work ahead.When I saw that a student had completed every item in the Orientation but was waiting on classmates, I messaged the student, telling them I would grade their forum post now to allow them to go on, but they needed to remember to return later to respond to their classmates. I later had to send a reminder message, but the students took care of this immediately after that.

Earning the next badge, the silver Student Expert Badge, went much more smoothly and quickly. The 2nd stop on their tour of Mountain View Community College opened with  their tour guide, Elizabeth providing some demographics on community college students in general while escorting them to the Student Lounge where they met several other community college students and watched their videos. Other activities  for this badge included reviewing a fact sheet provide by the American Association of Community Colleges (AACC), readings, a forum post with responses to classmates, and an overview of the 4 Options : Choose 1 assignment that connects to the gold Student Expert Badge.

Ah...time to level up! The Gold Student Expert Badge is awarded to those who complete one of the 4 options with a score  of 230 /250. These tasks were completed on time, and students provided excellent submissions. These were so well done that I wish I had considered including ways for them to share them with one another, perhaps in a forum where they could review and comment.  I hate to create more work for them, but learning from sharing is invaluable...More on that later.

Due Dates

I like using due dates as I feel it helps students keep on track and mirror the importance of deadlines in the workplace. I have never thought to ask students, however, for their thoughts. Experience has shown me that when an assignment lacks a due date, some students procrastinate..and when no or few due dates are used, those students tend to drop further and further behind, sometimes making it difficult to catch up. For the time being, due dates stay, but I will ask current students for their input on this topic. These current students have strong time management skills, but I am sure they have some useful insight to share.'

Pre-Reqs or Not?

When the course first opened, the Staff Social was a pre-req to the Orientation, and the Orientation unlocked all remaining stops along the tour.  My thought was to allow students to look ahead to better manage their time.

One student, however, was in the 2nd stop and had completed her initial forum post when I noticed she had jumped ahead to the readings in 3rd stop, Faculty Lounge. I checked the forum, and she was obviously waiting for others to post so she moved ahead.  When I contacted her about this to see if all was well, she explained that she had a brief window of time to work that evening and wanted to accomplish a short task. The other task on her list was a blog post, and she did not feel as though she had enough time to start and finish that task that evening, but she could complete the readings in the next stop. This makes perfect sense to me as I want to encourage students to take control of their learning and make choices that benefit them the most.

I decided to ask the other students their thoughts regarding  module pre-reqs, locks, and such. After all, it is their course and their learning experience. Results were interesting, offering more perspectives I had not considered.  While they reported understanding the value of pre-reqs and locking/unlocking modules, they also appreciated the freedom to work ahead and select tasks that fits within their personal time frame.

I respect that.

One suggestion was to look at a module/stop and see if knowledge form a preceding module/stop was necessary to understanding and completing that series of tasks. This way, some modules would unlock immediately, and others unlock through progression.

I like this! Students still have some flexibility yet can see the requirements and view what still needs to be completed to unlock specific stops. Canvas is a big help here. Students can easily see when a module is locked and what they need to complete to unlock it.  Yay, Canvas!

Screenshot of a locked module in Canvas

 

Learning through Sharing

The quality and creativity of student work never ceases to amaze me. It is often of such high quality that I wish I had thought to provide a vehicle for them to share their work with one another. Reading and commenting upon each other's blog posts and reviewing  other projects are such good learning tools. For example, for the Student Expert gold Badge, one student designed an orientation course for her culinary arts program, a course designed to address barriers to success and access for her students. What a great project and worthy of sharing!

I could, of course, have projects submitted to me for their grade and then ask students to post them in a forum for review, but that gets repetitive.  I need to experiment with other ways to encourage them to learn through sharing.

Discussion

Badges.  Badges are a component of game mechanics (Kim, 2015; Robson, et al., 2015) with several purposes. Possibly the most obvious function of badges is as a goal-setting device: goals keep us focused on what we need to achieve, and badges challenge us – i.e. give us the extra motivation – to complete the actions.

Goal setting is most effective when learners can see their progress towards the goal. Ideally I would like to award points along with badges to help push learners over the threshold of their current ‘level’ of achievement and ‘level up’. I am not sure, however, if Badgr and Canvas will let me do this. (A good reason to do another IM with Canvas support.)

There’s plenty of research to show that setting goals motivates us to achieve them, and in fact it is often thought that the fun and interest of goal seeking is the reward, rather than the badge. In this case, the badge merely directs the leaner in the correct direction.

Social Presence.  Best practice in online instruction stress the importance of social presence (Bird, 2007; Garrison, 2007; Garrison, Anderson, & Archer, 2000). Students demonstrate social presence when they project themselves as real people within a community, establishing personal and purposeful relationships. A key point here is for students to recognize they are not here purely for social reasons, but to interact with common purpose for the sake of inquiry. Students need to feel secure to communicate openly and to create cohesion. Swan and Shih (2005) found that group cohesion is significantly related to social presence and perceived learning outcomes. Richardson and Swan (2003) go on to connect social presence with student and instructor satisfaction with and perceptions of a course. Social presence in online discussions has even been identified as a predictor of academic performance and can be used as early detection for students at risk of failing an online course (Joksimovic, Gasevic, Kovanovic, Riecke, & Hatala, 2015).

Integrating opportunities for students to engage and interact with one another  is an important component of online instruction instruction as well as gaming (Ekman, et al., 2012), so I tried to provide such opportunities in this gamified course. The problem that has arisen, however, is that requiring students to respond to one another within the forums definitely enhances social presence, yet slows down student progress toward module completion.  Students need to wait for one another to post before they can respond.

I need to find a way to balance social presence with student need to move at one's own rate.

Differentiated Pathways.  The pre-assessment allows me to begin to differentiate learning in this course although not nearly to the extent that I would like to do. In an ideal world with 15 students in this course, I could actually differentiate more. I strongly feel that students learn a great deal from one another as they read, reflect,and discuss, and doing this creates social presence.  Students who already possess quite a bit of knowledge regarding one area could assist their classmates in their learning. If they are allowed to skip topics entirely, then remaining students may miss out on this expertise.

Couple this with the goal of making sure students become familiar with the peer-reviewed research and are able to use it as support....and I have a conundrum. Pre-assessment scores should be kept confidential, so I cannot really tell those students who already possess a great deal of knowledge on a topic that they do not have to integrate research into their response. that would signal their scores to their classmates. I suppose I would have to give up requiring the integration of peer-reviewed research on some discussions..... More food for thought...

Another part of differentiated learning is assignment choice. I want them to choose what benefits them, what challenges them, and would like to provide more choices. MasteryPaths will allow me to individualize assignments, and I can envision ways of incorporating this, but I want it to be meaningful and not busy work.

Ah...the joys of instructional design . . .  up next is Fat Points. . . .

References

Bird, N. (2007). The 3C design model for networked-collaborative e-learning: A tool for novice designers. Innovations in Education and Teaching International, 44(2), 153-167.  

Ekham, I., Chanel, G.,  Jarvela, S., Kivikangas, J. M., Salminen, M., & Ravaja, N. (2012). Social interaction in games: Measuring physiological linkage and social presence. simulation & gaming, 43(3), 321–338.

Garrison, D. R. (2007). Online community of inquiry review: Social, cognitive, and teaching presence issues. Journal of Asynchronous Learning Networks, 11(1), 61-72.

Garrison, D. R. Anderson, T, & Archer, W. (2000). Critical inquiry in a text-based environment: Computer conferencing in higher education. The Internet and Higher Education 2(2–3), 87–105.

Joksimovic, S., Gasevic, D., Kovanovic, V., Riecke, B. E. & Hatala, M. (2015). Social presence in online discussions as a process predictor of academic performance. Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, 31, 638-654.  

Kim, B. (2015). Designing gamification in the right way. Library Technology Reports 51(2), 29-35.

Robson, K., Plangger, K., Kietzmann, J. H., McCarthy, I., & Pitt, P. (2015). Is it all a game? Understanding the principles of gamification. Business Horizons, 58, 411-420.

Richardson, J. C., & Swan, K. (2003). Examining social presence in online courses in relation to students’ perceived learning and satisfaction. Journal of Asynchronous Learning Networks, 7(1), 68-83.

Swan, K. & Shih, L. F. (2005, October). On the nature and development of social presence in online course discussions. Journal of Asynchronous Learning Networks 9(3). Retrieved from http://www.sloan-c.org/publications/jaln/v9n3/pdf/