Experimental Lockdown Remote Project

Lesson Plans

Have taken to putting lesson plans into decorative graphics and then putting on the screen for the lesson. Reminds me, reminds them.
Here's some:

Gamification of the classroom. A bit of a ramble...

In my department in my college we teach to the UAL specification. That is there's a unit of learning, which has a number of criteria and then pass/refer markings are applied to them. I have been reading recently on gamification in business and other areas and wondered if there were any merit in using these techniques for teaching. Of course there's a major difference I believe between a classroom and a business. On the whole business is about being competitive while education is is more about co-operation.

We are all told that our students today are digital natives. This has been repeated so many times it is now accepted truth by everyone including the students themselves. By comparison their teachers are lowly digital immigrants. I'm going to call that hogwash. Students are no more 'natives' than their grandparents were. Students spend hours staring at small devices and communicating, their grandparents spent hours staring at the telly and on the phone. In both cases it's consumption of media and chatting. It's just the size, portability and content has changed. Students on the whole and their grandparents are both consumers of content, they neither make or create content. Most students won't ever program the device they are using - nor be able to fix it. If there's a difference, then it's the older (non-teenage) audience is more likely to give up as soon as they are faced with a problem.

Much is also talked about attention spans. Received wisdom is that young people have short attention spans.  I'm not sure it's that easy. I teach mature adults. Most times they don't have huge attention spans as well, it's just that they hide it better, and in a classroom situation they can be worse, not better than a group of engaged teenagers. However, that observation aside, we need to keep them engaged, and using game mechanics may be a way of doing that

Engagement is what this is about, and that is where gamification may help."Some researchers are now exploring what children can gain from electronic games, often emphasizing their potential to teach academic skills."(Olson, 2010)    

There have been a number of studies which have looked into the games industry to find out why games are so attractive to both children and adults. Many have focussed on addiction, as this is now being recognised as a social issue. Essentially young people can spend hours on games while maybe only short periods for study. In a similar way some groups of adults**, more likely male (30+) will negate other things for games. 

Players may play hours upon hours whereas they are not willing to spend more than 15 minutes on doing homework or studying for exams. 

However, people confuse gamification with playing games; these two are different things: 

• Playing a game is the actual action of playing, i.e. consumption. 

• Gamification, on the other hand, looks into games’ mechanism and how those principles can be applied to other things. 

Typical game elements

Elements that are often found in games include:

• Challenge.
• Chance.
• Competition between player/machine.
• Cooperation between player/machine.
• Player feedback.
• Incremental rewards.
• Winning.
• Progression through levels

How can we apply these elements to teaching?

There are small changes in style, wording and marking that may make changes. You should note that these comments refer specifically to my own practice.

Marking

An issue with the UAL specification. In my opinion is the pass/refer marking for Units 1-7 and the enclosed criteria. Also there's an issue with the whole university spec of "refer". While the FMP aspect (Unit 8) can't be tampered with (and is marked differently); I believe that the rest can be adjusted to suit us and our students better. I think we should be marking like a game:

Start with zero points. That is everyone starts at a the bottom. The first screen in the game. The easy one. For a task/brief with typically four criteria they can  score one point for each criteria, importantly and differently these points are graded 1 (Pass), 2 (Merit), 3 (Distinction)., although they are not explicitly written as such.  When they have all four points they can either move onto the next task/brief or (2) they can repeat the task/brief  to try and improve their score. Obviously at some point they will ahve to move on, but it gives high flyers a chance to improve their marks and slower movers a chance to complete. 

Personally, I would use big numbers - like pinball machines, so 100, 500, 1000 - or something like that.

Bonus points for almost anything could be added - for example lose points for being late, extra points for extra work. A system of rewards for high flyers or random(-ish) bonus rewards could also be considered. An element of chance, not just skill rewards slower players and is an element in most successful games.

The Unit is a quest with challenges

Students should be challenged by the quest to achieve the unit. The challenges, briefs and tasks, are routes to complete the quest. Their first attempt at learning something should be treated like, and as unimportant as, "Game over" if they struggle. Not a reason to give up or fear failure but a challenge to start over again. A way of increasing motivation.
As the quest has several challenges - possibly from different lecturers with different tasks - then it will be possible for them to score the points on different tasks, i.e., not pass/refer on one task only. Special attention should be paid to enable slow/disadvantaged learners earn points. For example turning up having completed outside tasks or even just turning up on time and equipped correctly. 

Tracking learning

It's likely that a different method of scoring their achievement will be required. It would be in everyone's interest to make this as centralised, easy and visible as possible.

• Centralised, so that lecturers and students (..and EVs) can easily see how they are doing, both in comparison with others (increase competition) and also their own achievement.
• Easy, because marking systems have in the past been prescriptive, arcane and difficult to navigate. 
• Visible so that everyone can see at a glance how they and others are doing. 

Conclusion

Is this worth a go? What do you think? Probably it needs more work, would it work in Maths/English where some of our learners struggle?

What do you think?

**Me, I don't play games, have never done much - other than board games - and don't do sport. So I look on from outside.

Bibliography: Olson, C.K. (2010) Children’s Motivations for Video Game Play in the Context of Normal Development. Available at: https://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/releases/gpr-14-2-180.pdf (Accessed: 7 July 2016). In-line Citation: (Olson, 2010)         

Pictures from the Artists' book fair - Arnolfini April 2015

Took an afternoon off from doing the Fringe Guide last weekend to visit the Artists' book fair at the Arnolfini gallery in Bristol. Looked like it could have been good, so I had suggested to my students that it might be a good idea for them to come along and see what was there - especially as some of them were talking about doing something similar.

To be honest, if I hadn't said that I would have probably given it a miss - I was up to my eyeballs in the Fringe guide at the time and could have done without the distraction. However, I went - saw some exceedingly good work - didn't see any students. (A little of me was glad since I had offered a minor bribe - if they had all turned up could have been expensive.) (Yes, you're all worth it..).

In no particular order here's some shots of things that caught my eye. My wallet was caught by two books - would have been more - but I've got to eat as well.

Sone nice, fairly standard production book, particularly taken by the Eggar-tist one bottom left.

Selection of letterpress/block printed books. Want to do some vaguely similar for the Bedlam leaflet for Bath Fringe Festival. That is print from block. Did have this idea of doing the whole thing as a Linocut, but lino doesn't have an undo button which that kind of product needs!

What is it about bugs that I find interesting? These were engravings made up as books - exquisite drawings with fine, high quality printing. Tempted to buy one, but not quite sure what I would do with it.

Lots of little books, some full of poems or drawings. Others prose.

Strange books and objects, some fun, many fairly obscure. Like the "Affordable housing" piece at top left.

More hand-printed tiny books. Some are linocut others are screen prints.

Delicate model making from old books. One of a couple of things where old books are cut up or into to make objects. Bath Library have run a competition in the summer holiday break using discontinued library books. Must say that I still find this kind of destruction of a book a bit disturbing. And I speak as someone who made four life-sized papier mache apostles from old bibles.

For me the star of the show - difficult to photograph effectively. This is a paper cut-out that forms a graphic narrative. It's a strip of A0 (?) paper that has been laser cut incredibly finely; I would guess that parts of it are no more that 0.5mm wide and it folds down to a large fan-like structure.

I was in awe...

Same idea, but a bit smaller from the same people.

Collection of books that told a story, exhibited in the doll's house that they are writing about.

Selection of comic books and graphic narratives. Brought one similar that had been produced using silk-screen print.

Digital Design Diploma

Stopped in the reception at college I was asked to run a new course at Bath College next academic year. Title is undecided, the heading above is just a working title. This will be a year long course that will teach adult learners a suite of creative software to enable them to realise their own creative vision. Course fees will be in the £959-1100 range and it is anticipated that the course will be accredited by university of the Arts London. (UAL). Sounds exciting! Very pleased!