What has been your experience with video game learning support? What principles seem to be widely used in in-game support?

I’ve encountered a lot of Temporal Contiguity Principles in games, where text and images appear at the same time, allowing students to make connections between the two. One of the most classic uses of this principle in games is to play an animation at the beginning of the game with a narrator to help the player understand the context of the game. For example, war, alien invasion. In addition, the Pre-training Principle is a very common principle used in games. For example, before the game starts, the game will have newbie exercises on how to move, attack, and dodge. At the same time, the game gives the player a series of options that allow the game system to understand the player’s level of play and generate a tutorial. Lastly, all the games I’ve played have adhered to the Voice Principle, which is that voice actors’ voices are more emotive and realistic than artificially generated voices, and they make for a more immersive gaming experience for the player.

Almost all the games I’ve played don’t adhere to the Coherence Principle, which requires that unimportant content not be included, and favors the use of images and text to communicate content efficiently, and no background music. However, games often choose to use animation to communicate content rather than images, and are accompanied by background music to provide immersion in the game.

Where do you see constructive adjustment and reverse design being used in this course or other courses you are taking/have taken?

In the math I have taken the professor used Constructive Alignment in the design of the course. Constructive Alignment requires the course to follow a sequence of learning objectives, activities, and assessments. In MATH 151 the professor would explain the end goal of the class in the first class of the semester, which is what we would end up with when we finished the class. The professor in MATH 151 will explain the final goal of the class in the first class, which is what we will know when we finish the class. The professor will then set up learning activities such as weekly math lab exercises and quizzes, and set up group assignments for students to work on projects to help reinforce the knowledge gained in the class. Finally, the professor began to develop a grading rubric that would determine the percentage of points and the distribution of grades for each knowledge point.

Backward design

Backward design starts with the objectives before the assessment and learning activities. In STAT 252, which I have taken before, the professor first set up learning objectives for us, which required proficiency in calculating probability by the time the course was completed. Then the assessment program was set up where the instructor would determine if we could pass the course based on the results of each exam. Finally, learning activities were set up where we were required to complete assignments from the professor’s step-by-step program and form groups to work together on projects.

How will you use multimedia tools and content to support and enhance active learning? What will it allow them to do that they aren’t doing now?

I would try to use multimedia tools to design something that has leaderboards, fun learning, interactive learning, and promotes students’ desire to keep learning new things. An example of this is a popular program for learning English called Duolingguo. The software has a community to help students share their experiences with each other, and it distributes the learning content into different modules and uses games to help students memorize new words. Kahoot, a program I used to use in middle school and high school, allows teachers to design different types of questions, multiple choice and fill-in-the-blanks. Students can get higher scores by answering them quickly, so they can keep thinking faster and memorize faster.

What does it allow them to do that they aren’t doing now?

From my personal experience, I believe that using VR or MR can do things that educational tools have not been able to do before. VR and MR allow students to learn without being confined to a specific environment or condition, for example, students can use VR equipment to literally walk into a historical site, or enter the world of Haiti to observe topographical features and various types of fish. Instead of just being located in a picture in a book, students can observe with their eyes, making learning more interactive and fun.

Can you describe (step-by-step) an example of scaffolding in a learning experience you have designed or experienced?

The professor in STAT 252, which I studied last year, used scaffolding to help us learn.

First the professor started the course by going over the basic concepts of statistics and gave us the basic use of other tools such as excel. Examples of statistics are median, mean, and any use of excel for summing, multiplying.

The professor will then explain example problems and break them down into many smaller parts to show us how to answer them. For example, breaking down a problem into calculating statistics for different data sets and the variance in them.

After that, the professor gives the students practice problems, making sure that they are not too difficult and are similar to the examples. The professor gradually reduces the number of hints given to the students to ensure that they are able to complete the problems independently.

In addition, the professor encourages group discussions among students, so that students can share their problems with each other to solve them, rather than relying on parsing to get the answers directly. At the same time, the students will exchange their work with each other for correction, and find out the deficiencies of other students to explain and correct them.

Finally, the professor will provide a detailed evaluation after completing all the questions and help students to find out the areas that need to be strengthened. Students also interact with the professor to find out what they need to fix to make sure that they can get better at future assignments.

How was your experience with H5P?

It was my first time to hear about H5P, and I tried many different types of H5P in the Catalogue of H5P Content. One of the things that impressed me the most was the use of H5P to learn Japanese. I need to keep filling in the correct Japanese words in the video to keep the video playing normally, and if I input the wrong words, they will provide me some hints, which can increase my learning concentration and efficiency. At the same time, the designer can specialize some key knowledge points and set independent questions for them. This can help students to become proficient in a part of the lesson that they don’t know and need to review before moving on to the next step. Also, I have created some simple computational topics using h5p for this assignment. And I added hit to each option to show students how to find the correct method. I think it is a very good tool to help learning.

What activities do you think you would utilize most often in an instructional setting and what would you use them for? Which ones do you think would require the most resources to create?

I would create some videos using H5P and insert some questions into the videos. Firstly I would make sure that the videos are interesting to ensure that the students would want to understand the development and plot behind them to increase their engagement with the content. Instead of just reading about the knowledge alone, which would bore the students. In addition, special questions will be created for some important points so that students can grasp the knowledge quickly. Lastly, I believe that videos require the most resources to create because they require editing scripts, finding actors, locations, and spending a lot of time filming and editing to get a great video.

Comments:

I agree with you about h5p, it is an excellent educational tool and I try to use it for making multiple choice questions and videos to help with learning. It can quickly help learners consolidate and review what they just learned in class and will keep them focused. In addition, I also think that the preparation of the course is the most time-consuming, for example, we need to go to prepare a variety of materials to create interactive types of projects, for example, video games, videos, multiple choice questions and other types of h5p projects.

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