Designing Competitions for Gamification

In learning, gamification is competition integrated into a learning system. The competition could be to gain leaderboard points, to gain a position in a team, to receive a badge of recognition or a social validation such as a ‘like’ or other expressions of praise from the learners community. The system can also extend to giving away monetary rewards such as redeemable points or coupons. The underlying idea is why not make learning fun and exciting with an associated reward system. This post covers some very important pointers that you must be aware of when designing a competition for gamification in a learning system.

Learning Analytics and Learner Activity

While data from a Learning Management System (LMS) can tell you about assessment scores and percentage completions, it can also tell you a lot about your learners, the content and their interplay. To get performance insights of your platform and the learning content, you must identify different data points, fetch the data, analyze and interpret it. Learner proficiency, Learner engagement, Learner preferences and Learner progress are some metrics that are computed by combining several data. Some examples of data that you collect from a learning platform are Clicks, Pages visited, Time spent, Search keywords, etc. There are some metrics that are directly connected to learner activity and we will look at those in this post.

Visual storyboarding tips for elearning

You should never start an elearning production without an approved storyboard in hand. A storyboard helps align all stakeholders to the production output expectation, quality, cost and production time. In elearning, storyboards are written in two styles. The descriptive storyboard uses text to describe the screens with only references to graphics. The visual storyboard on the other hand depicts the screens graphically showing what the final output will look like. Both styles have their own advantages. A visual storyboard will be interpreted by everyone in accordance with the screens created / shown. This post has some valuable tips that you can use for creating a great visual storyboard.

Branching scenarios and Dialogue trees

We know what scenario based learning is. Scenario based learning uses real-life situations or scenarios to explain a concept. In an elearning course, the scenarios are presented using images or videos. Branching scenarios allows learners to decide how they want the scenario to unfold. You must note here that the learner's control over the path in a Branching scenario is limited by the choices provided to them by the program - it is not truly infinite. Yet, this allows learners to experiment and discover possible outcomes from their actions at each point. Thereby, they learn favorable and unfavorable actions in a situation.

Elearning storyboard and its elements

What is a storyboard in elearning?

In elearning, a storyboard is a document written by an Instructional Designer that visualizes the flow of content for an elearning module in line with Instructional Design theory and practices. A storyboard ensures that learning content is delivered to a specific learner profile in the most effective way. The storyboard describes the delivery of the content screen by screen with details of the On-screen text, Images, Animation or Videos, Interactivity or Simulation, and Voice-over. With all these details, a storyboard aligns all stakeholders to the complexity, cost and timeline of the project. In this post, we will look at the two popular storyboarding tools and the essential elements of an elearning storyboard.

Adventure Game Ideas for eLearning

Adventure games are usually single player games in which the player controls the actions of the main character of the game (protagonist). All adventure games have a story or a narrative to it. The player is required to navigate and explore spaces such as rooms or landscapes to solve a puzzle or reach a destination. During the game, the player is faced with obstacles that they must avoid and enemies that they must defeat in order to proceed. Collectable objects are often placed in these spaces that help the player combat these situations and accomplish the assigned task. Unlike other gaming genres, you can get very creative when building adventure games. And because it is fun to play, it naturally becomes a great template for elearning games.

Creating elearning simulations

What is a simulation? A simulation is a system built artificially, mimicking a real-life environment and situation that allows a participant to interact with the system or alter it for the purpose of observing, learning or experiencing the changes or responses to that interaction. We build simulations for participants when they do not have access to the real-life environment or are not permitted to access it. The reasons for not gaining access to these real-life environments are usually cost, security (of the environment), safety (of the participant) and rarity. Since simulations are used for observation and learning, they find a place inside elearning courses as well.

Flashcards in elearning

What are flashcards? Flashcards are used to help learners retrieve information completely from memory. This method is referred to as Active Recall and it creates a permanent connection to the content or the learning material. Every card has content on both sides, one side has the cue and the other has the answer. Learners look at the cue and try to recollect the answer on the other side in a short span of time from memory. The learners then look at the answer on the reverse side for confirmation.

Machine learning in e-learning - k-means clustering

Is it possible to use machine learning in e-learning? There are several aspects of e-learning where machine learning (ML) can be applied. Machine learning can be used directly in the learning content or on analytics. Since an LMS captures a large amount of data every day related to the content (courses or modules), learners and trainers, machine learning can immediately find application in analytics. Before we get to that, let’s understand what Machine Learning is in simple terms. Machine learning (ML) is a subset of Artificial Intelligence (AI). In Machine Learning, you write algorithms that allow the system to learn from the data provided. The system discovers data features and then uses that to conclude a fact, perform an action or improve itself.

Interactive Matrix Diagrams

A picture is worth a thousand words. Many complex ideas are represented visually and one of them is a chart. We have all used charts at some point in our lives. These could be line charts, bar charts, scatter charts. Apart from these data charts, we also use diagrams that represent data pictorially just like other charts. Charts and diagrams help us visualize data and their dependencies and are designed for studies and analysis. And so, they are also used in e-learning courses. Since we love interactivity, in this post we will look at an interactive elearning example with the use case of a matrix diagram or chart. You can also play around with a simple interactive chart on this post.

Gamification of quiz in e-learning

There is nothing wrong with ticks and cross mark feedback in quizzes, but give some thought to this. As a learner, what will you be more motivated to respond to - a quiz that throws questions at you like an interrogation or a quiz that has a story, a challenge, nice visuals and some sound? No, we are not talking about building a full game to render a quiz of 10 questions. We're only asking if you ever considered gamification of any part of a quiz so learners are motivated. Learners must remain engaged throughout the course and that includes quizzes. We'll take an example and show you how a quiz can be gamified.

Jumbled Letters - A word game for elearning

Validating the response to a fill-in-the-blanks question in an e-learning assessment is tricky. The first reason is that there can be more than one acceptable spelling to a word, mainly arising from American vs. British spelling. Secondly, if a question has more than one blank to be filled in, then we must let the program know if the order of responses is important or not. Thirdly, some questions may themselves have other correct answers. Finally, this works best with single words and not with phrases. A game like hangman (hangaroo, if you remember) can be a substitute to a typical fill-in-the-blanks question as it overcomes these challenges. This post discusses a game design that can overcome these problems just like hangman does. This is called Jumbled Letters. Play the game here below...

Ordering Game - Tower of Hanoi

One of the easiest puzzle games to build digitally is the Tower of Hanoi. It is a game which involves Ordering and Arrangement of disks on a tower (a stick or a rod). In e-learning content, you will find situations which involve ordering of items. Items may be arranged based on Size, Quantity, Position, Time, etc.. A topic about the size of planets in the solar system involves visualizing the planets from big to small (or vice-versa). Similarly, an e-learning module on climate change or quantity of carbon emissions involves visualizing the data from more to less. Likewise, a Standard Operating Procedure will require visualizing the order of Steps in the SOP.

Word game with a story or scenario

Word games can be used in e-learning to not only present content, but also for reinforcement or even as a quiz. Games become more interesting if they have a story (a plot or a scenario). The story provides reason to why a learner should play the game. In this post we will try to make a simple word search game interesting by adding the flavour of a detective story. The intent here is to provide some ideas that you may be able to use when building your word game for learners.

Crowdsourcing content

Organizations create content regularly to train their staff. Content creation is a complex activity with several stages:

• Analysis
• Conceptualizing
• Creation
• Implementation and
• Measurement

Cartoons in Scenario based learning

Learners almost instantly get connected when the content includes infographics, cartoons or illustrations. Shapes and colors are attractive and more eye-catching than plain text. This not only makes it easier for a learner to skim through the content quickly but also helps in knowledge retention.

A Card Game for E-learning

Technical e-learning modules that have only basic interaction can be boring. Introducing games inside a module or even as part of a quiz, will make it engaging. Games can be of any genre. Action, Adventure, Puzzle, Strategy, Sports are examples of game genres or categories. There are several factors that affect the decision on the choice of the game. The first one is the audience. Not everyone likes action or shooting games since these types of games require users to have a high level of hand-eye coordination and quick reaction time. These abilities improve with practice over time. Another factor is the budget. Games that require rich graphics and physics are more expensive to build. You'll also need a good story or motivation to play the game. Some of the easiest games to build are word games and card games. Since these games are common and most users would have played these at some point in their lives, the learning curve is short.

An experiment with image processing

Image processing is a technique used to enhance an image thereby preparing it for further use. Changing the brightness, contrast and smoothing (noise removal) of an image are examples of image processing. Computer vision, a study that deals with the recognition of objects in images and video depend heavily on image processing. Computer vision has been around since the 50s and has matured over time to what it is today. Augmented reality, Virtual reality and Mixed reality use computer vision in one way or the other. That makes the field of image processing all the more important.

Wouldn't it be cool to try out something in image processing? How about trying to extract the background from a footage of a busy scene? For the simplicity of the experiment, we'll use footage from cameras that do not move. Cameras that are usually locked in a fixed position are trail cams, security cams or a microscope camera.

An interactive Fishbone diagram

The Fishbone diagram is also known as the Cause-and-effect diagram. It was popularised by Kaoru Ishikawa, a Japanese professor, as a method to visualise a problem and its root causes. The diagram became a common industrial brainstorming tool in the 1960s. It is also referred to as the Ishikawa diagram.

Structural Complexity of e-learning modules

The general belief is that interactive content improves engagement. The truth is, it depends on the learner profile. Factors that define the learner profile include age, gender, education, region, industry, experience, likes and dislikes, beliefs, etc. All these factors must be taken into account when conducting a training session or developing an e-learning course. A trainer or an instructional designer determines the amount of interaction needed in an e-learning course.