A Gamified Ideation App – Co-authored by Tala Mami and Earl Einarson
Earl and Tala have created a proposal to develop a mobile-based web application that encourages students to create ideas and submit them to a shared group freely. As a team, we decided to utilize Stanford University’s Institute of Design (2016) design thinking process in order to discover commonalities between our organization’s students and to incorporate these generated ideas into the finished application.
Earl is a Tech Instructor and works with First Nations throughout British Columbia. He travels into small, remote First Nations communities with a portable computer lab and instructs technical skills. Many of the students that he instructs have low or developing technical skill sets. Tala worked as a Learning and Development Director in the hotel industry, and she facilitates staff training orientation programs and leadership programs to develop and manage critical staff development functions. Tala requires a user-friendly interface that enhances communication among her tech-novice staff who work in operational departments such as Housekeeping (HK) and Food and Beverage (F&B). Our shared objectives were achieving collaborative learning, especially for tech-novice students using user-friendly interfaces and low technical barriers.
From a student perspective, instructors ask students to be vulnerable in front of others, speaking in public, admitting they do not know the answer, being wrong or right and feeling judged, either way, experiencing conflict and disagreement, and sharing personal opinions, thoughts, experiences. Therefore, creating a classroom where students (novice or experts) feel comfortable sharing risks requires building the basic: a community. We referenced Garrison’s Community of Inquiry in our design thinking process. According to Garrison (2007), The Garrison’s framework consists of three elements social, teaching and cognitive presence. Social presence represents the ability to establish personal and purposeful relationships among students, cognitive presence represents understanding through collaboration and reflection in a community, and teaching presence represents the design of the App where the instructor determines student satisfaction, perceived learning, and sense of community.
From an instructional designers’ perspective, we thought of adding the gamification learning theory into our component. Gamification of learning “is defined as the use of game elements, including action language, assessment, conflict/challenge, control, environment, game fiction, human interaction, immersion, and rules/goals, to facilitate learning and related outcomes” (Landers, 2014, p.757). Our idea is creating a live, synchronous, simple web app that provides real-time chat for an only targeted group (Intranet based; not accessible outside of the group). The format would allow pictures to be uploaded, pictures of drawings/sketches/mind maps that would encourage open dialogue and higher Intellectual risk-taking in addition to building a community among students. The environment would be one of open sharing (like stories on Instagram), and the posting would only be available for 48hours. This way, users would be more prone to put up ideas. Each post is given 10 points to a user and would allow up to 100 points of input. There is gamification built-in in which users get stickers at 20, 50, 80 and 100 points. Accordingly, establishing an impetus to put up more and more ideas.
At this point, we are looking for feedback on the potential successful implementation for our App; we want to hear from readers if integrating this application into an online program is doable? If yes, does it help encourage students and keep them engaged? What modifications can be added to this prototype? We appreciate your inputs through commenting below, and we will reply to all responses received no later than 9 pm Wednesday, December 04, PST.
References
Stanford University Institute of Design. (2016). A Virtual Crash Course in Design Thinking — Stanford d.school [Website]. Retrieved from https://dschool.stanford.edu/resources-collections/a-virtual-crash-course-in-design-thinking
Garrison, R. (2007, April). Online community of inquiry review: Social, cognitive, and teaching presence issues. Journal of Asynchronous Learning Networks, 11(1), 61-72. Retrieved from http://jaln.sloanconsortium.org/index.php/jaln
Landers, N. (2014). Developing a theory of gamified learning: Linking serious games and gamification of Learning. Simulation and Gaming 45(6), 752-768. Retrieved from DOI: 10.1177/1046878114563660
Attribution
Photo by Daniel Korpai on Unspash
December 4, 2019 at 9:53 am
The design thinking process must have been a very interesting activity for the two of you to engage in. Although your collective goal of building community and providing a safe space for your respective learners to share and participate is commendable, I foresee some unique challenges that you will each separately face. For instance, Knowles (1985) seminal works reinforces the unique approaches that adult learners require, including readiness to learn. In addition to the unique needs of this demographic, Campbell and Schwier (2014) contemplated the geographic inequalities in access to technology, and highlighted several scholarly works that further question how gender, language, culture, and socioeconomic standing can affect education and the incorporation of technologies. Additionally, I would argue that the removal of content after 48hours, lessons the learner’s flexibility, which according to Bliech, Kauwenberghs, Zhu, Stuyven, Pynoo, and DePryck (2019) is a crucial success factor in online and blended environments.
Thanks, Lisa Gedak
Blieck, Y., Kauwenberghs, K., Zhu, C., Struyven, K., Pynoo, B., & DePryck, K. (2019). Investigating the relationship between success factors and student participation in online and blended learning in adult education. Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, 35(4), 476-490. doi:10.1111/jcal.12351
Campbell, K., & Schwier, R. A. (2014). Chapter 13: Major movements in instructional design. In Zawacki-Richter, O. & T. Anderson (Eds.), Online distance education: Towards a research agenda. AU Press.
Knowles, M. (1985). Andragogy in action. London: Jossey Bass.
December 5, 2019 at 2:03 pm
Hi Lisa,
Thank your thoughtful feedback. You are right, geographical inequalities and other demographical factors may affect the successfull implementation of our prototype. For more flexibility perhaps we can start the course with a survey that asks our students which social media platform they prefer or if they prefer ommunication through social media, the survey can be filled anonymousley. This way we can listen to our students and address their needs. One outcome might be providing our students with an educational overview of a certain platform(the choice of the majority) before we ask them to share stories..etc.
Thank you for your suggestion of removing the part where we delete the content after 48 hours, we think it is valid and we will consider this feedback in our next iteration!
Thanks lisa!
December 5, 2019 at 12:17 pm
Tala and Earl,
First off, I admire your ability to empathize with your learners, and understand their needs. You recognize the vulnerability of your cohort and understand the importance of creating a safe learning environment. Your proposal to create an online community of learners reflects your understanding of the learner’s needs. Your proposal embraces the principles of Transformative Learning Theory which encourages the creation of a learner-centre course structure fostering student interaction (Mezirow 1997). Mezirow also notes that Transformative Learning Theory includes creating a venue for the promotion of self-reflection. Perhaps you could include a blog or other tool which allows students to capture and record their thoughts as they proceed through their learning journey.
To answer your question, does it help encourage students and keep them engaged, I would answer yes. One suggestion: you may consider adding video to the mix. Instagram and TicTok are embedded in the broader online culture. Learners familiarity with these platforms may lead them to be more familiar with uploading short videos as a way of communicating. This may add an additional dynamic element which encourages engagement.
I have a question for you: will you create your own platform or utilize an existing one? Veletsianos states that “Digital technologies are often appropriated and repurposed as digital learning environments to meet educational objectives (Veletsianos 2010)”. Perhaps utilizing an existing technology will make this project more cost effective, although there may be none which possess all the elements you desire: closed community, time-limited access, and gamification in the form of badges. Thanks for the opportunity to contribute and good luck with your next stage of development.
Mezirow, J. (1997). Transformative learning: Theory to practice. New Directions for Adult &
Continuing Education, 1997(74), 5. https://doi.org/10.1002/ace.7401
Veletsianos, G. (2011). Designing Opportunities for Transformation with Emerging Technologies. Educational Technology, 51(2), 41-46. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/44429917
December 5, 2019 at 1:48 pm
Hi Jeff,
Thank you so much for your thoughtful feedback. I liked how you linked Transformative Learning Theory to our prototype, it is deffinately related to our context.
We were thinking of partialy utalizing Instagram through sharing stories as most of our students are familiar with this social platform. I agree you, there is no platform that combines all of our needs. However, we tried to come up with an idea that is simple, like we mentioned before, our target audience is students who are novice tech-users, developing such a platform would require us to cteate the set up which can be costly, but the idea is to embed links to other social platforms and these links will only be shared with our stuents only in a safe learning environment. Speaking of adding video, Ear amd i thought of creating a library section where students can use different resources (videos are one of them), the library will provide an effective educational technology and the kind of resources will be selected depending on the digital litracy of our student.
Thank Jeff for your feedback!