An exercise in organization

This week we researched the role of organization in design an instructional message. After reading and researching I again applied what I learned to developing a lesson to teach my family better relationships communication skills. My children are young and new to the world of psychology, so I continue keeping it simple. Again I wanted to focus on more of the "remedies." I thought it could be beneficial to explain this in an alternate way, using an organizational chart, but that could also serve as a sort of clear overview of both problems and solutions. 

At first I had the graphic oriented portrait. Because I had so many concepts in the middle (problems and solutions) I decided to orient it landscape instead. I also thought it simply might look nicer. I added circles to try to help chunk the information (Lohr , 2008, p. 137) as well as the representation of the "problem words" that I had created previously, to be more visual and, consequently, more effective (Lohr , 2008, p. 149).

My wife critiqued it by saying the lines should have arrows (initially they did not). Because arrows strengthen relationships by showing cause and effect (Lohr , 2008, p. 146), I thought that was a great suggestion and the graphic now reflects that change. 

Lohr, L. (2008). Creating graphics for learning and performance: Lessons in visual literacy (Second ed.). Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Merrill.

Modern Narrative Games

As Narrative games took a quantum leap forward with better graphics and the internet, MMORPG's (like World of Warcraft) came along. The social espect put them in a league of their own. I played one for a few years, but it was a bit too time-consuming. Because of the virtual world experience and the social aspect, for some people it's easy to lose track of time and enjoy them too much, moreso than "conventional" games.

I think that's the unique aspect that can add to education. A virtual world and social experience, albeit in a game context. Much can be done for learning with any of these three, and the combination is incredible. You can go places, experience things, build things, play, work with others, build relationships, talk and learn.... all in one. It is a remarkable combination. As technology continues to advance, this will advance as well, until we are doing this with holograms, substrate-independent type avatars, etc. It' worth understanding better now to lay the foundation for the tsunami to come.

Narrative Game: The Legend of Zela

For some reason, during a good decade of my life, I was in some sort of digital black hole in regards to video games, where I wasn't up on what was going on. I think it was high school years, where I was busy and played PC old games but had no console, and then went on a 2 year church mission and came home and was busy with school and girls for several years after :)

At any rate, there's this whole epoch of game history that I did not participate in. Sega, Nintendo and yes, Zelda. I've seen it but never played, till now. Fortunately I lived through early, primitive video games enough to smell the excitement that is Zelda, even today. It's enough action and RPG and story mixed in with puzzle to make me appreciate the puzzle. All puzzle, not my taste. And maybe there's a lesson here when using games for education: try including a variety when possible, because people (players) have different tastes. If an educational game is 100% puzzle, you've lost me. But if it's part puzzle, part RPG, part story-based etc. like Zelda.... ahhhhh.

Peasant's Quest

I just played a game that came out when I was 9 year's old, Peasant's Quest. It bored me out of my mind for about 15-20 minutes until finally some big pig faced monster pounded me on the head and schmooshed me into the ground and the game ended. Wandering all around in the game forever was sort of neat for the first few minutes, in a retro, old school nostalgic way. But with little to do the simplicty was lost on me, especially because I don't really enjoy puzzle games - and because the whole point was to figure out what to do, it was a big puzzle. I'm so grateful games, like movies, have come so far!

Blender interactions: Week 3 of EDUCAUSE's MOOC #BlendKit2015

This last week was Week 3 of EDUCAUSE's BlendKit: Becoming a Blended Learning Designer MOOC. Its stated goal "is to provide facilitated assistance to faculty members and instructional designers in developing and designing blended courses through (1) a consideration of key issues related to blended learning and (2) practical step-by-step guidance in producing materials for a blended course (e.g., developing design documents, creating content pages, and receiving peer review feedback at one's own institution)." The option I am pursuing is the UCF/EDUCAUSE Certified Blended Learning Designer credential. This blog post is a reflection based on what I learned this week, woven in with a recap of my own notes to better learn the concepts.

The topic this week was Blended Assessments of Learning. It very well may be because I have been extremely pressed for time and perhaps rushed this week's learning, but I was a little disappointed. I felt like it was mostly a review on the basics of assessments, and not particularly focused on adapting assessments to blended learning environments as much as I had hoped. There was mention of authentic assessments, which I believe are in a big uptrend, but not mentioned so much in terms of blended learning and how that might look or work, but rather more about what authentic assessments are. I think there is incredible opportunity here to really explore how authentic assessments could be adapted and work when blended, as opposed to all online or all face to face. 

Chapter 3 seemed to really get into the blended part of assessments toward the end with a checklist of preparing an assignment to be blended, and then a discussion on informal assessments. The one sentence summary is a good strategy, but I think more would be better. The video was much more informative, but the format makes it difficult for me to take notes like the reading does and I fear I didn't gather as much as I did the reading where I was able easily go back and re-read things..

Four Horsemen project: reminder/inspiration

This week we researched the role of color in design an instructional message. After reading and researching I again applied what I learned to developing a lesson to teach my family better relationships communication skills. My children are young and new to the world of psychology, so I continue keeping it simple. This week I wanted to focus on more of the "remedies," something that my children can have present in their rooms to remind and inspire them. Lohr mentioned the fact that "color can attract and control attention"(2008, p. 266) and my first thought was "bingo."

We went to the movie Cinderella last night as a family, and I was very moved by the theme "have courage and be kind." It fit very well for this Four Horsemen project. I also remembered the "teaser" movie poster which was blue with a glass slipper. So I decided to borrow that, not minding it is Disney's since this will simply be used in the walls of my own home. I thought there were interesting things going on with color.

It seemed that there is so little going on in this image that text I would add must be symmetrical so as to not jump out looking awkward (Lohr, 2008, p. 274). In the same vein, I used the abundant white space to chunk and call attention to the text: if the text was larger and crowded, or competing with many other graphical elements, it would have been lost as a jumble (Lohr, 2008, p. 272). I made sure to use the same color (white) and to pick one that would contrast well with the background, and compliment the white that was already present around and in the shoe image.

My wife critiqued it by saying the text should be smaller (done now and fixed) and otherwise was happy. I'd love to hear more feedback.

Class in Second Life

One of the interesting things about Educational Games & Simulations class this semester is being in class synchronously via Second Life. Here is a screenshot from perspective of my avatar flying a shuttle. The interesting things about virtual worlds is how they can, to a degree, mirror real life experiences: flying a shuttle is more fun than walking or running around on two virtual legs. It also makes me more nervous because I don't want to "screw up."

Blender interactions: Week 2 of EDUCAUSE's MOOC #BlendKit2015

This last week was Week 2 of EDUCAUSE's BlendKit: Becoming a Blended Learning Designer MOOC. Its stated goal "is to provide facilitated assistance to faculty members and instructional designers in developing and designing blended courses through (1) a consideration of key issues related to blended learning and (2) practical step-by-step guidance in producing materials for a blended course (e.g., developing design documents, creating content pages, and receiving peer review feedback at one's own institution)." The option I am pursuing is the UCF/EDUCAUSE Certified Blended Learning Designer credential. This blog post is a reflection based on what I learned this week, woven in with a recap of my own notes to better learn the concepts.

My reaction must unfortunately be short this week because of time constraints. One of my favorite gems in the reading this week was that even if nothing else of a face to face lesson is blended to be online but uploading the syllabus and course materials, this can be advantageous to learners. While the reading here mentions that this can lead to learners better communicating feedback and opinions, I think that there are many other advantages tied in to constructivist, connectivist, self-discovery and other frameworks that aid learning, in addition to the learner data provided to the instructor that educational technology affords. Overall this was another excellent batch of learning about blended learning.

What makes a good game?

There's a lot that can be said, and has been said, about what makes a good game. After reviewing many different types of games and taking notes, I've compiled my own list that is true for me:



Good games have good instructions at the beginning, that aren't overly complex or long. They are best delivered briefly as part of gameplay.

Good games don't waste time making you wait while they slowly load credits, the game name, etc.

Good games have smooth, intuitive controls that are not awkward. Playing them and maneuvering the character (or whatever) is easy.

Good games typically have a point. Even if it's just a simple shooter, at least provide a backdrop story, even if it's just one line.

Good games have a combination of great graphics and sounds. These do not have to be complex: cute or interesting suffices.

Good games often give me a choice of what I can do, as much as it is possible with the game type,

Good games evoke emotions, especially fear and anxiety. Changes of modality (lighting, music, changes in mood) can help this.

Good games should give me rewards when I do well, like when killings monster or defeating a boss. Random, variable treasure seems best.

Good games often have varied experiences - there's several different things going on in the gameplay.

Good games often allow for a feeling of progressing: a map, h.p. bar for me and/or monsters, leveling up, etc..

Good games often permit customizing, such as inventory, character builds, etc.

Good games give me some surprises and novelty.

Good games give flow in that space like the story of the Three Little Bears: not too easy, not too hard, just right. They should be challenging and, for me, more difficult than not.

Reflecting on card games, games of chance, and traditional board games

I just played some traditional games, which is fun when so much game time today takes place digitally with fancy graphics. They're not all somethign I like, and also I mostly dislike them in digital format. On the other hands, most of these games I really like in real life when playing with others. I think a lot of them are great for keeping the mind sharp, developing math type skills etc. although I struggle to envision incorporating these into instruction. It's something I will have to explore further.

Reflecting on Sim games

I just played Sim City: Flash. Sim games are one of my very most faroite types of games. Sim games have always struck me as having the best potential for being educational. It seems obvious: sim games require you to manage a simulation of real-life. That entails knowing and learning about what is being simulated, be it economics, engineering, social issues, military, history and so on. Civilization is an oft-quoted example, which I also love in my own life. In fact, I am typing this out in between turn while playing Civ5 :) My 13 year old son is sitting beside me. Games like this inevitably lead to conversations about history. We've sought out and watched documentaries about things from the game (Attila the Hun, Krakatoa the volcano, etc.)

Reflecting on Shoot'em Ups Asteroids & Galagon

Two childhood favorites! Was great to play these again. Thinking about them now, I wonder what value such games could have in term of learning? Definitely players cojld learn about physics, or maybe mechanics or things of that nature if built into the game. For example, a player may need to understand basic math or economics to upgrade or repair ships, etc. There is opportunity for tangential learning with these type of games.

Zork!: Interactive Fiction

When I was a kid I saw the cover-rt for the game Zork I and it was thrilled me because of its dungeonesque look. It's crazy that after all this time I've only but now played it for the first time. Although I've never played it before, the type of game is not new to me and I've played them my entire life. It's really exciting to me that in a game like this we used words to describe the experience as if we really did something in real life and went somewhere. For example, I went down a path through a forest and to a canyon with a river and a cave etc. I can picture it, just like reading a story. It's a lot like (my beloved) Choose Your Own Adventure stories. Stories that are games and vice versa. What could be better than reading a story that is simultaneously play?

Angry Birds... now playable on this blog woohoo

Enjoy playing Angry Birds! ;) If this doesn't load in the space immediately below these words, check your version of Flash or just give it a minute... on some browsers it loads slower.

knugo.com

Four horsemen training: remedies graphic & the selection principle

This week we researched the selection principle, which is "the mind's tendency to pay attention to what is dominant in an image," (Lohr, 2008, p. 116). This includes the figure-ground distinction and three principles of effective instructional visuals: ""Concentrated" is the first of the three c's and refers to emphasizing key points in both graphics and text elements. "Concise" refers to reducing visual information to its most basic, core level for meaningful learning. "Concrete" refers to elements in the visual that make it easy to visualize." (Lohr, 2008, p. 102).

After reading and researching I again applied what I learned to developing a lesson to teach my family better relationships communication skills. My children are young and new to the world of psychology, so I continue keeping it simple. This week's work was interesting because I also tried to be more conscious of integrating it with previous weeks' designs, so I repeated motifs, fonts, colors (especially combining black, red AND blue because some of the pieces so far are black and red, and some are black and blue, which is tricky) and overall design.

The goal was to create a piece to introduce solutions, or remedies, to the problems that I will be teaching about (the "four horsemen"). Here, I concentrated on the problems by making them bold red, and concentrated on the solutions by bolding key words in their descriptions. The biggest challenge to be concise was in the descriptions, but after a lot of researching solutions and editing words and sentences down I felt comfortable that these paragraphs aren't verbose. To help make the overall message more concrete, I used an exciting call-to-action verb, "Fight," made it blue, and used an exclamation mark at the end of the phrase. I repeated a phrase in the same blue font as "Fight" at the bottom to reinforce the positive idea that the learners will do these proactive behaviors.

Finally, I added a blue border around the whole piece to better improve my figure/ground . Before I did, it felt very confusing to select between what is the graphic as a whole and what is the white space behind it on a white page such as this one in this blog post.I tested this with my wife, who had nothing to add, so hopefully I will get some critique from others.

Lohr, L. (2008). Creating graphics for learning and performance: Lessons in visual literacy (Second ed.). Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Merrill.

"Gamers Get Girls"

The infographic "Gamers Get Girls" (below) was certainly an interesting little collection of facts about how certain games (in this case, massively multiplayer online role-playing games) purportedly do an excellent match-making job. A few things that sort of blew me away, and my thoughts on them:

3/4 World of Warcraft (WoW) players date other WoW players. I wondered if it wasn't perhaps because they already date in real life, so therefore play there game together. But then as I read on, things got interesting.

On dating site Match.com, a man contacting 100 women can expect 1 reply back. Wow that is shockingly bad. I dug a little and discovered that the ratio of men/women is about 50/50, so apparently it's not from a lack of women. The women seem to simply not be responding, or to not be having some need(s) met. Meanwhile in WoW, about 40% of the women are attracted to another player. Hopefully these are single women because 15% of WoW players are single compared to 43% of the population in real life.

A few other little gems:

Uncertainty about whether a person likes you makes you interested in them... while if someone picks you on, say, Match.com, that uncertainty is gone. In other words, dating sites - in their earnest efforts to effectively and intelligently match people - ironically enough remove a key ingredient to real courtship, whereas virtual worlds don't.

Disinhibition effects make people honest online so people are less unlikely to confess and describe their feelings in an online game. I think a missing ingredient from the infographic here is that we may see the opposite happen in dating websites: honesty can be compromised by strutting like a peacock and putting one's best foot forward, because presenting oneself is a big part of the whole point. In online games like WoW, like real life, it's not, leaving only the benefit of a boost to honesty from that disinhibition effect.

The infographic also mentions that men approached by women during high-adrenaline tends to make them more attracted to the women. This intuitively makes sense, because men generally like to "do" things (sports, outdoors adventure, etc.). Online games and their virtual battles definitely provide this.

But I think there's a missed opportunity to take that last point further, which I'd love to see explored. In online games like WoW, men and women are doing something together that they both enjoy, and can socialize while doing it. Much like these situations in real life, bonds form. And this seems to be a great missed opportunity of dating websites. Many people don't like fantasy or sci-fi, the predominant genres of online games. If dating services could create online games that are more broad in appeal, perhaps there would be more women and men playing them... and therefore more hooking up. There's a lot of interesting things to say and explore about that, and doubtful the economics of this industry would go this direction, but it seems to be a missed opportunity and a better direction for more efficiently bring couples together.

And if all of this is the case for gaming and love, if virtual game worlds more effectively hook people up for love without trying, whereas carefully designed matchmaking services calculated for no other purpose fail... what does this say about games for education compared to traditional teaching models such as the lecture? Virtual worlds simulate a world that our minds are more naturally attuned to and motivated by than many of the articifical constructs contrived to (often unwillingly) put information into the minds of students.

What's obvious is if I were single and looking for love, I'd definitely pick a game.

What will my blend be? Week 1 of EDUCAUSE's MOOC #BlendKit2015

This last week was Week 1 of EDUCAUSE's BlendKit: Becoming a Blended Learning Designer MOOC. Its stated goal "is to provide facilitated assistance to faculty members and instructional designers in developing and designing blended courses through (1) a consideration of key issues related to blended learning and (2) practical step-by-step guidance in producing materials for a blended course (e.g., developing design documents, creating content pages, and receiving peer review feedback at one's own institution)." The option I am pursuing is the UCF/EDUCAUSE Certified Blended Learning Designer credential. This blog post is a reflection based on what I learned this week, woven in with a recap of my own notes to better learn the concepts.

We just read a great chapter from the BlendKit Reader on Understanding Blended Learning. Blended Learning can address a variety of needs. It can help schools struggling with limited space, as well as facilitate faculty collaboration; it can provide new engagement opportunities for courses or provide transition between face-to-face and online learning; it allows for adaptive and differentiated learning; and for students it can combine convenience with real life social interactions.

If I didn't know better, personally I'd think that online, or partially online (blended) learning would be less effective than traditional face-to-face instruction. Fascinatingly, this seems not to be the case. A meta-analysis conducted by the U.S. Department of Education discovered that, "Students in online conditions performed modestly better, on average, than those learning the same material through traditional face-to-face instruction."

Additionally, "Instruction combining online and face-to-face elements had a larger advantage relative to pure face-to-face instruction than did purely online instruction." Student analytics provide a rich source of information about learners, where they struggle, where they do better or worse and so on. Online tools also can enhance engagement.

However, blended learning also has proven to frequently be complex, time-consuming and fairly difficult to implement (Anderson and Elloumi, 2004). McGee and Reis (2012) lay blame with the design process, specifically course objectives. This seems intuitive to me from an instructional design perspective: a cardinal rule of educational technology is to not use technology simply for technology's sake, but to let a good instructional design process (needs analysis and the rest) to inform the use of technology. It would seem that if this process is not carefully followed, then the why, when, where, and how of applying technology by creating or converting instruction to be blended can result in a mess. Ingredients of traditional and online learning include live events, self-paced learning, collaboration, assessment and support materials. When an ideal learning experience is established, these elements can be analyzed to determined which pieces may be delivered online without compromising facilitating learning. Much simply comes from experience. Start small and evolve the blended learning design process gradually (Singh and Reed, 2001).

Two case studies in this chapter were helpful. Probably my biggest takeaway here was the reminder of the importance of what often obstructs implementation of blended learning, ironically a couple of the most basics learning design principles: follow a good instructional design process and don't use technology just for the sake of technology, but let it address the needs discovered and objectives formulated.

#blendkit2015

Anderson, T. & Elloumi, F. (2004). Theory and practice of online learning. Athabasca: Athabasca University.

McGee, P. & Reis, A. (2012). Blended course design: A synthesis of best practices. Journal of Asynchronous Learning Networks, 16(4). Retrieved from http://sloanconsortium.org/jaln/v16n4/blended-course-design-synthesis-best-practices

Singh, H. & Reed, C. (2001). A white paper: achieving success with blended learning. Centra Software. Retrieved from http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.114.821&rep=rep1&type=pdf

CARP - Happy Talk!

Focusing this week completely on CARP (contrast, alignment, repetition and proximity), I created a learning-aid for my kids to use upon completion of our little family-training to teach better, more positive communication in our family (and with others). As described before, my children are young and new to the world of psychology, so I am keeping things simple.

Here's why I think it will work, following the guidelines of CARP:

Contrast - I created a white background as my primary way of making strong contrast. I also used blue and capital letters for the name of the checklist, so that it would pop out. I want them clear on what this is.

Alignment - I left (Lohr, 2008, p. 201) aligned everything, and aligned the four elements together with their check boxes in the center. I separated them from the title with a line. I also separated the Weekly Tally with a line and distance from the primary elements above it and devoted little space to it, since it will only be used once a week instead of daily.

Repetition - I repeated the boxes next to the four communication elements, and gave them all the same blue color to help identify them as the same thing. I repeated the four communication elements in capital letters, though being careful to use them sparingly to avoid difficulty in distinguishing words and sentences (Lohr, 2008, p. 204). I also broke the quote at top up in a way that the word "kindness" started a line each time it occurred in the quote, which helped repeat it and highlight its importance.

Proximity - I have four areas of Proximity: 1) title, 2) quote, 3) four elements with check boxes, & 4) weekly tally.

When running this by the family Boss, she said I'm missing a brief mention of what point scale to use for the check boxes (for example, 1-10). She said I also may need to simplify some words to better suit our learners. I figured they will recognize words from what we teach them, but they are so young that I will likely make that change.