Games People Play: The Rules of the Game

‘That’s enough about lessons,’ the Gryphon interrupted in a very decided tone: ‘tell her something about the games now.’

- Lewis Carrol, Alice in Wonderland

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Have you ever wondered why your kids (or, based on the game requests in my Facebook feed, YOU) are willing to sit for hours playing computer games but trying to get them to sit and do their homework is like pulling teeth? Ten million people a day play Candy Crush, paying over $2,000,000 a day for the add-ons and upgrades to the free game, and the company that produces that game is worth $5.69 billion. Game makers know how to use psychological principles to motivate players to pony up a few dollars at a time to get those special boosts.

Business has taken what game makers know and applied it to boosting sales.  Have an app on your phone that gives you rewards for certain behavior? Every time you use it, you are playing their game...literally. Buy a cup of coffee and earn stars for a free cup. Make a certain combination of purchases and earn more stars. Visit twice in a week and earn 25 bonus stars, but visit three times to earn 100 stars. Each one of those activities is designed to increase the likelihood that you will buy more coffee.

What does this have to do with learning? Imagine if you could harness the power of game playing to motivate students to learn? What if you could take what the makers of Candy Crush know about making people spend $2,000,000 a day on a FREE game and use it to get your students to participate more in class? Suppose you used what Starbucks knows about motivating people to buy overpriced coffee and applied it to motivating students to study?

You can...it's called gamification, and it is based on sound, psychological principles of motivation and behavior modification. Gamification is a huge topic, so I will spend the next several weeks covering various aspects of.  Let's get started with the basics...what are the rules of gamification?

What is Gamification?

Gamification is "application of game-design elements and game principles in non-game contexts." [Wikipedia]. In business, this application is designed to motivate people to buy a product, to increase brand loyalty. In education, this application is designed to motivate people to learn and solve problems. Gamification is not game-based learning, however. With game-based learning, students play a game from beginning to end to learn the course objectives. Gamification is layering game elements on to the traditional learning experience to increase motivation to learn.

I'm currently taking a course in Game Design from Adobe. In that course, we learned about "flow" as applied to games, where you get so wrapped up in playing that you lose track of time. the game is hard enough to be challenging but not so hard that you get frustrated. The concept of flow applies to any task in which you become so immersed in what you are doing that it takes up all of your concentration, and you are not affected by outside distractions.

When I saw that, I immediately thought of Vygotsky's Zone of Proximal development. According to Vygotsky, learning takes place in that sweet spot where learners can achieve a skill with the help of a teacher or peer, but not on their own. If the task at hand is too hard, they cannot achieve it, and they become anxious. If the task is to easy, they can already achieve it on their own, and they become bored.

To me, there couldn't be a clearer parallel between game-playing and learning!

But it gets better.  In the live class, there was a discussion of flow in gaming and how you design games to optimize flow. A game with optimal flow would have:

• Clear goals
• Chance of completing task
• Immediate feedback
• Continuously challenging
• No distractions

Again, I was struck by the parallel between gaming and learning.  A well-designed learning experience has clear goals, lies within that zone of proximal development to make it possible for the learner to complete it with the teacher's guidance, provides feedback the learner can use, and is challenging enough to make it interesting...and provides no extraneous information to distract the learner.

The idea behind gamification in learning is to take what we know about making people want to play games and apply that to making them want to learn, that layering of game elements onto learning to help them get into the "flow" of learning.  I'll go into details about what those game elements are and how to apply them to learning in future posts, but for now, let's look at the two major categories of elements.

Game Mechanics vs. Game Dynamics

In simplest terms, the game mechanics are the rules and the rewards.  What are you supposed to do, and what do you get if you do it? Buy a cup of coffee and you earn a star is an example of a rule and a reward. String together enough of these rules and rewards, and apply them consistently or with a specific schedule, and you will get people to keep buying coffee.

But why they keep coming back is part of the game dynamics. Game dynamics are those parts of the game that adjust or modify based on different players preferences. People are individuals, and not everyone is motivated by the same thing all the time, so you need to change up your game once in a while.

In case you haven't figured it out yet, my coffee example is Starbucks.  Every time I get my triple shot nonfat raspberry mocha, I earn something like ten stars.  That's nice, but it isn't why I buy a triple shot nonfat raspberry mocha, so I won't make a special trip across town to get one just for the stars.  But once in a while, Starbucks sends me a special offer, where I can earn 100 stars if I buy my mocha and, say, a breakfast sandwich. I'm all over that, because I usually get a breakfast sandwich when I get my mocha anyway, so I will make sure to stop when that particular offer is in effect.

However, once in a while they offer bonus stars for making multiple visits in a week, 25 stars for two visits but 100 stars if you make three visits.  I don't think I have ever taken advantage of that offer, because I rarely visit Starbucks more than once a week, because it's on the other side of town, and it makes me later than usual for work (I am so not a morning person..). The reward for doing something I wouldn't normally do has to be pretty big to get me to do it, while the reward to do something I already have a tendency to do can be smaller.Taking advantage of the relationship between inclination and incentive is part of the game dynamics; what the inclination and incentive are would be mechanics.

(Starbucks is the master of gamification. That special reward for buying a breakfast sandwich doesn't just happen to be for the non-coffee menu item I buy most often, they track my purchases on my Starbucks app...and they were one of the first to let you pay with your phone. Getting a reward buying a sandwich is game mechanics; knowing what sandwich I'm inclined to buy is game dynamics. And making it easy to pay with my phone is just genius.)

So that's the difference between game mechanics and game dynamics - the mechanics is the what and the dynamics is the why. The tough part comes in understanding what will make some people do what you want them to and why, and for that you need to understand some psychology...which will be the subject of the next post.

(If you want to see what I have been learning in my Games Design class, check out my learning journal. You don't want to know how many hours I spent tweaking that volcano...talk about flow!)

You might be a correspondence course if....

'I think I should understand that better,' Alice said very politely, 'if I had it written down: but I can't quite follow it as you say it.'

- Lewis Carrol, Alice in Wonderland

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This article from the Chronicle of Higher Education popped up on my Facebook feed recently.

Western Governors U. Might Have to Repay $700 Million in Student Aid

$700 MILLION! Why?

I did a little searching, and found this article from Inside Higher Education that had a little more information.

Federal Audit Challenges Faculty Role at WGU

In essence, what the report found was that WGU's online course offerings lacked "regular and substantive interaction between students and their instructors" rule for online courses. Instead, their courses were considered "correspondence courses." If an institution offers more than 50% of its courses as correspondence courses, it is ineligible for Title IV financial aid funds.

While WGU was under scrutiny for its competency-based education model, the "regular and substantive interaction" rule was put in place when distance education courses became eligible for federal financial aid. Financial aid was limited for correspondence or "telecourses" because of the rampant fraud that became widespread when GIs returned from war with GI Bill education money available, but little time to take traditional college courses. In the early 90's, Congress limited the amount of aid available to students taking correspondence courses; to do so, they had to define what a correspondence course was:

Correspondence course: (1) A course provided by an institution under which the institution provides instructional materials, by mail or electronic transmission, including examinations on the materials, to students who are separated from the instructor. Interaction between the instructor and student is limited, is not regular and substantive, and is primarily initiated by the student. Correspondence courses are typically self-paced.

Fairly recently, distance education was defined as:

Distance education means education that uses one or more of the technologies listed in paragraphs through (4) of this definition to deliver instruction to students who are separated from the instructor and to support regular and substantive interaction between the students and the instructor, either synchronously or asynchronously. The technologies may include -
(1) The Internet;
(2) One-way and two-way transmissions through open broadcast, closed circuit, cable, microwave, broadband lines, fiber optics, satellite, or wireless communications devices;
(3) Audio conferencing; or
(4) Video cassettes, DVDs, and CD-ROMs, if the cassettes, DVDs, or CD-ROMs are used in a course in conjunction with any of the technologies listed in paragraphs (1) through (3) of this definition. 

The primary difference between these two definitions is the phrase, "regular and substantive interaction between the students and the instructor." While the definition of distance education requires the use of technology for content delivery and communication, there is nothing in the definition or correspondence courses that precludes its use.

In terms of financial aid, this isn't a big issue for us (the DOE has many bigger fish to worry about there), but it is in terms of accreditation. Middle States clearly states in its distance education guidelines that "Course design and delivery supports student-student and faculty-student interaction." While they don't say in what format or how frequently that interaction occurs, if students can make it through your online class without any contact from you - or without you ever seeing any work they do - then your course doesn't meet that criterion. It might be a correspondence course...

Definitions

What constitutes "regular and substantive interaction?" A key concept to remember in trying to interpret distance education requirements is the general purpose: to ensure that students enrolled in distance education classes get an educational experience equivalent (not equal) to that which they receive in the traditional classroom. According to a presentation by representatives of the Department of Education, "regular and substantive interaction" should meet the following criteria at a minimum:

Regular:

You interact with your students in the classroom on a regular basis, so you need to interact with your online students on a regular basis.  Students also need to know when they are expected to interact with you or with each other and that interaction must be required, not optional. That doesn't mean the interaction needs to be face-to-face (equal) or even in real-time. It does need to occur at regularly scheduled intervals; since classroom courses meet a minimum of once a week, you should interact with your online students at least once a week. It should also require some sort of response from the student to make it an interaction, not just an action on your part. These interactions also need to be initiated by the instructor; students asking for help or clarification, for example, do not meet this criteria.

Substantive:

To be substantive, it has to be detailed and related to the academic content.  A grade is not substantive.  Providing individualized feedback to an assignment is substantive. Answering a technical question about the course is not substantive; answering a question to explain specific course content is.  An auto-graded quiz is not substantive, even if students receive automatic feedback on each question, because they are not interacting with the instructor, just the technology.

Sample Activities

What sorts of activities can you include in your course to meet this? Anything that you initiate, students respond to, and you respond back meets the criteria.  Usually these activities will require students to write something that you respond to, rather than just answer multiple choice questions. Here are just a few examples:

Discussions

This is the most obvious way to meet this requirement. You can include a weekly discussion topic in which students are required to participate and in which you participate as well.  You should require not only an initial posting, but define a minimum number of responses students need to make.

You don't need to respond to every posting, but you should monitor the discussion two or three times a week, and respond to at least some of the postings.  You might answer questions students have or steep the conversation in a specific direction so students consider alternative viewpoints.

You can make this a graded discussion and use a rubric to streamline the grading process.  This is another way to meet that "substantive" portion of the requirement, because it gives you another opportunity to provide individualized feedback to students and to tell them how to improve their performance in the course.

I use discussions to move beyond the textbook into less concrete topics.  Sample discussions in my astronomy course include space exploration funding (should it be public or private), sexism and racism in science, what part of the Solar System should we explore next, and will we find signs of life elsewhere in the universe in our life time. These are all topics that don't have a right or wrong answer and give students a chance to look beyond the hard facts of a topic and form and support an opinion.

Blogs

Similar to discussion, blogs can be weekly requirement.  However, instead of a "back and forth" exchange like a discussion, blogs are a single posting with comments.  Again, like discussions, you need to define for students the required level of a participation, and you need to read an comment on student blogs as well.  You can use rubrics to grade blog participation as well.

I've used an "In the News Blog" assignment for several years.  I give students a specific topic, and they need to find an online news article (with very loose definitions of "news") to blog about.  The blog has a specific format, with requirements for format and summarizing, and students must comment on at least two postings from their classmates. As with discussions, you should respond to blog postings a couple of times a week by posting your own comments; you could even post your own blog as an exemplar for student work.

A key part of this assignment is the requirement for students to include a question they still have after reading their article. I can answer the question by commenting on the blog or in the feedback when I grade the blog assignment. This allows me to meet the substantive portion of the interaction requirement.

Written Assignments

Rather than relying solely on auto-graded assignments (which do not meet the substantive portion of the interaction requirement, since they provide only a grade and not specific feedback from you as the instructor), include written assignments as well.  These could be essay questions on chapter quiz or separate assignments that require more in depth writing.

I include weekly virtual labs or critical thinking assignment in my courses.  Students need to answer specific questions, submit their assignment as Word document attachment, and I provide specific feedback when grading.

Collaborate Sessions

Every faculty member who uses Blackboard Learn has access to Blackboard Collaborate, Blackboard's web-based conferencing tool.  You can use Collaborate to run a real-time lectures or discussions with students online. The challenge for using it to meet the regular and substantive interaction requirement is requiring students to attend the session.  It is difficult to find a time when all online students are available to meet online; most online students take online courses because of time flexibility. However, if participation is NOT required, it doesn't meet the regular and substantive interaction requirement.

You can get around this in a couple of ways.  You could offer the same session twice, for example, in order to give students more options. If you make this time requirement known to students upfront (through information in WebAdvisor or on the Online Course Request form), students will know that they need to schedule their time appropriate.  You can also record the session, and require students to watch the video and complete some written activity to which you respond based on the recording.

While holding online office hours is an excellent use of Collaborate, and one all faculty should employ, they don't meet the "regular and substantive interaction requirement." Just like office hours don't meet the requirements for class time in determining credit hours, online office hours are not considered regular and substantive interaction. Students are not required to attend office hours, so while you may offer regular office hours, student participation is not considered to be regular.

Looking Ahead

These aren't the only activities that can meet the "regular and substantive interaction" requirement. I would love to hear about any examples you might have; please post them in the comments. As long as they:

• are initiated by the instructor
• require a student response
• occur at regular, relatively frequent intervals
• relate to academic content
• allow you to provide a response or individualized feedback to the student

they can meet this requirement.

Again, we are not in danger of having to return financial aid money like Western Governors University, but our next Middle States accreditation visit is just around the corner. You should implementing activities in your online courses now to meet the regular and substantive interaction requirement before we are forced to do so in order to be able to continue to offer online course and programs and maintain accreditation. Even one activity a week that meets these criteria will improve our chances of meeting accreditation requirements, and more importantly, improve our online courses.

Learning to Love (not Loathe) Layers

‘You don’t know much,’ said the Duchess; ‘and that’s a fact.’

- Lewis Carrol, Alice in Wonderland

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So, I had a bit of an "Ah-ha!" moment this morning. Bear with me for a moment while I set the stage...

As I mentioned before, in the past year or so, I have taken several free, online courses to learn how to use Adobe products to create visual learning experiences for my online students. One of the cool things about Adobe software is you learn about something in one product and it generally applies to others.  That's usually a good thing.

Except for layers.  Layers have been the bane of my existence. Now, layers sound like really cool things.  Every shape you draw in Illustrator, every object you animate in After Effects, every track you add in Premiere, every mask you create in Photoshop resides on a separate layer.  You can group layers and ungroup them, you can turn them on and off, you move them around, which is important since whatever is in the top layer is what you see...unless you change the layer's opacity or you turn it off. You can isolate an object to modify it by selecting its layer. You can duplicate an object by duplicating its layer. You can even nest layers within layers creating levels of sublayers.

Layers are pretty fundamental to the effective and efficient use of this software. In fact, they are so fundamental, that I never really learned about them in these courses.  Or rather, I was never taught about layers.  I was taught how to do things, and in that process, saw how layers aided that process, but at no point was there a lesson about layers and how they work.  Most of what I know about layers involved a lot trial and error and fair amount of swearing.

I understand the rational behind this; my situation of having zero, zip, nada, niente, nichts experience with Adobe software as well as no graphic design background when I started taking these courses is pretty unique, something I quickly realized from the very start. There may be a bit of self-selection going on there though. Since these are free courses, and there is no penalty for not finishing (*cough*UX to UI *cough*)(*cough*twice*cough*)(*cough*3rd time's the charm*cough*), someone who feels they don't have the background knowledge may drop out early.

I know not everyone is as persistent as I am.  Those of you who know me might say stubborn. Those of who know me really well might say pig-headed.

But I had a big problem I wanted to solve, and so I was willing to put up with a whole lot of discomfort to work on solving that. I would have liked to have a LITTLE more information to start with, but that's the challenge of teaching people with a variety of background skills, balancing teaching the lowest levels without boring the higher ones.  It's also part of the expert-novice dichotomy; experts often forget all the little bits and pieces they had to learn to become experts (that's why newly-learned are sometimes better teachers for true novices than experts, which is the subject for another post...)

OK, we're almost to the Ah-Ha! moment.

One of the first Adobe apps I learned to use was Illustrator, and I use it a lot.  In fact, I probably use it more than anything else. I often use it to draw images like those to the right that show a process over a period of time...like the evolution of stars in a cluster over 10 billion years.  These images are all the same except for two things; the time frame and the position of the stars. The way I created these was to do the first one, save it, save a copy, modify the time and the star pattern on that, save it, save a copy, modify the time and star pattern on that, and repeat three more times. That worked, but it left me with six versions of the same illustration...six versions which I had to fix when I realized I had a typo in the word Luminosity.

I used Illustrator for MONTHS before I realized it used layers. Then I decided to learn Character Animator, and I had to learn how to use layers in Illustrator.  It was painful. Productive...but painful.

This morning, I was working on another project that involved making a change to something I created in one app (an animation in After Effects) which automatically updated in a project in which I used it in another app (a movie in Premiere Pro).  As I was marvelling over that, I thought how cool it would be if I made a change in one version of an Illustrator project - like fixing a typo in Luminosity - it would automatically update in all versions.

And then I had my Ah-Ha! moment. Those of you who know me know it was more like a "Karen, you idiot" moment.  Those of you know know me really well know it was more like a "Karen, you dumbf---" moment.

I realized I could have used layers.  I could have created one project, grouped the time and star pattern, duplicated that group five times, changing the time span and star pattern in each group. Then when I export the image as a PNG to use it in my interactive lectures, I can hide each group in turn to get my sequence of main sequence turn-off images for a stellar cluster.

And then I realized I could have used it in this image where I created multiple versions of this one to teach the breakout of the four fundamental forces after the Big Bang.

 Or this one I where I used multiple versions to teach the major epochs in the timeline of the universe from the Big Bang to present day.

Or these that show the different possible fates of the universe.

And don't even get me started on this one.  I must have a dozen different versions of this - which I will need to completely redo if they discover Planet 9, which would be a trans-Neptunian planet, of which there currently are none in the Solar System

That Ah-Ha! moment is when the light bulb goes off.  Its when all those higher order thinking skills finally come together. You have analyzed your learning and evaluated its usefulness and created  your own understanding of how something works or how it relates to your world. In the words of American Idol, you've made it your own.

This is important because it makes for deeper and more meaningful learning.  Earlier in my Adobe journey someone could have made that suggestion, and I would have understood it, but I would not have internalized it as much.  I would not have had that moment where suddenly it all came together and finally made sense - to me, not to someone else.

That is hard to do in a classroom.  As teachers, our first instinct is to explain, to direct, to guide to the correct path. Sometimes it's because it takes more time than we have to wait for that understanding to occur naturally in each student. Sometimes it's because we assume a student won't get to that point, and we want to help them. Sometimes it's just a natural instinct to fix a problem.

But maybe the next time you see a student struggling, take a moment to let them work it out on their own.  If they ask for help, give them guidance on how to figure out the answer rather than guiding them to the answer. Work on their problem solving skills instead of solving the problem for them. It may take longer to get there, but in the end they will learn more and better.

I now have a grudging respect for layers.  I may not actually love them, but I no longer loathe them...much.  I have my Ah-Ha! understanding of them and how they can make what I do easier.  That's the sort of learning moment we should want our students to experience at some point, rather than feel like we need to explain everything. It's a powerful moment.

I still hate Photoshop, though.

Thinking Outside the Box: Higher-Order Thinking Skills

"For, you see, so many out-of-the-way things had happened lately, that Alice had begun to think that very few things indeed were really impossible."

- Lewis Carrol, Alice in Wonderland

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I have been thinking about higher-order thinking skills a lot lately.  From trying to make my online courses more engaging to talking to faculty about flipped learning to taking an Adobe course where we explore ways to increase creativity in students, higher-order thinking has been, well, on my mind.

So, what are higher-order thinking skills? I'm glad you asked...

We have all heard of Bloom's taxonomy, a way of classifying learning objectives that has been around for decades. It consisted of six categories named for the type of learning outcome they described: knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation.

The taxonomy was modified more recently to use verbs as category names (since learning objectives use verbs to describe observable, measurable behavior) and to modify two categories. Instead of describing types of learning outcomes, the new descriptors defined how learners used and interacted with knowledge: remember, understand, apply, analyze, evaluate, and create.

There are lots of lists out there with verbs you can use to write objectives at each level, as well as directions for how to write learning objectives based on Bloom's taxonomy, but that's not what I want to talk about here.

Bloom's taxonomy is normally described as a hierarchy, with one level leading to the next. The higher-order thinking skills (HOTS) are the ones on the top of the hierarchy, with lower-order thinking skills (LOTS) at the bottom.

It is usually presented in a pyramid diagram like the one to the right. I tend not to like that one, for two reasons.  First, making "Remember" the largest area makes it seem like it is the most important, or that you should have more objectives of that level than others. Second, it puts the levels in a hierarchy, implying you need to master objectives at one level before you can move on to the next.

(Not to mention my OCD gets itchy when you can't fit the labels for the top two levels inside the pyramid...)

Some people present the pyramid flipped, with the point at the bottom. This emphasizes the importance of the upper levels, but it still maintains the hierarchical nature of all the levels.  In my opinion, all of the layers are not hierarchical, so this scheme still is not ideal.

In this scheme, the higher-order thinking skills are Analyze, Evaluate, and Create, while the lower-order ones are Remember, Understand, and Apply.  The lower-order skills are somewhat hierarchical; generally, in order to apply knowledge you need to understand it and to understand it you need to remember it.  However, trying to apply knowledge often leads to greater understanding, and the more you use knowledge, the likelier you are to remember it, so that hierarchy is not perfect.

(And then there's that whole OCD with the labels outside the pyramid boundaries...)

The idea of a hierarchy falls apart at the higher-order levels.  Analyzing involves breaking something down to its component parts, identifying or forming relationships among those parts, and separating facts from inferences or opinions. Evaluation is the process of forming judgments or placing value on ideas or products. Finally, creating is the process of making something new, forming new and original relationships between elements to produce something where the whole is greater than the sum of the parts.  Each one of those higher-order skills are separate, even if they are related. As you create something new, you need to evaluate its effectiveness.  Part of that creation process involves analyzing the relationship among the elements.

I drew this image to describe my thoughts on Bloom's taxonomy. I like this approach because it shows the relative importance of higher-order learning objectives along with the interconnectedness of the lower-order objectives. It represents the lower-order objectives support of the higher-order ones, but does not imply a hierarchy within those orders.

By the way, I used higher-order thinking to draw this picture. I created it, of course, but I also had to analyze what I considered to be the relationships among the categories, and evaluate how well my diagram demonstrated those relationships.  I also analyzed what the traditional diagrams showed and evaluated them to determine what I thought they didn't emphasize.  All of that is built on remembering and understanding Bloom's taxonomy in the first place, and about 35 years of applying it to writing learning objectives.

Why is this important? A number of research studies show the increased importance of creativity as a leadership quality in business. IBM surveyed 1500 CEOs from 60 countries, and creativity emerged as the most crucial factor for success. Adobe surveyed students and teachers globally about the importance of creativity in education.  Both felt creativity will be essential in the future workforce; 94% of teachers believe that GenZ students will have careers that do not yet exist.

Problem-solving and critical thinking are often cited as some of the top skills employers want.  These skills require all of the higher-order thinking skills, analyzing a problem's complexity, identifying relationships among data, creating possible solutions, and evaluating their effectiveness. However, the majority of employers say students lack the problem solving skills needed to succeed in the workplace.

Clearly, higher-order thinking skills are important Flipping the classroom, authentic assessment, problem- and project- based learning are all ways we can encourage the development of higher-order thinking in students. Unfortunately, the traditional method of direct lecture instruction and multiple choice assessment, does not encourage this way of thinking.  It may have been the way most of our college courses were taught, but if we were honest with ourselves, we might realize those courses could have been taught more effectively.

Over the next several weeks, I will talk about specific ways to encourage higher-order thinking skills in the traditional and online classroom.  From things I have tried, like moving to all essay exams and gamifying  deadlines to things I have helped others try like flipping the classroom and learning by doing, all of these techniques require faculty to do certain things.

1. Embrace failure. Be willing to fail and to allow your students to fail. Not everything you do will work, and students will not always be successful.  That doesn't mean you should give up any more than they should. If we never tried anything new for the fear of failing, we never would learn how to walk.
2. Rethink assessment. The ability to assess one's own learning is a higher-order thinking skill, so students need to be taught it.  However, we tend to view assessment as a means to a grade.  Giving students low-stakes ways to assess their learning is key, but it is a balancing act. You need to give them enough incentive to complete the assessment (like a grade) but still make sure that failure doesn't discourage them.
3. Reward the good. We tend to punish bad behavior instead of rewarding good behavior. Instead of assessing a late penalty or not accepting late work, try offering incentives to motivate students to do work on time.  If there is work you want students to complete before class, give them additional time or attempts; students who choose not to do the work on time don't get a penalty for turning work in late (only if it does not cause you more work).
4. Encourage creativity. Why do we insist students write answers to exams? While good written communication skills are important, employers are becoming more interested in verbal and visual communication skills as well.  By giving students options in how to communicate what they have learned, you are making the learning more relevant to them.
5. Be uncomfortable. This image popped up in my twitter feed last year. I think this may be something college faculty, in particular, find challenging, being put in the position of not being the expert in something. In order to learn or try something new, you need to acknowledge that the way you have always done it may not have been the most effective. That makes people uncomfortable. But that's not a bad thing...

So keep thinking about higher-order thinking skills, and use those higher-order thinking skills to try new ways to encourage them in your students.

Mixing It Up with Interactive Online Lectures

“Alice had begun to think that very few things indeed were really impossible."

- Lewis Carrol, Alice in Wonderland

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If there was one tool I could convince people to try it would be Office Mix.  Whether you are flipping a classroom, teaching online, or making up a snow day, Mix allows you to "mix" multiple sources of information into a PowerPoint deck, narrate your presentation, and include questions students need to answer - and you can incorporate it into Blackboard Learn as a graded assignment.

I used Mix to create learning activities that incorporate videos from NASA and ESA that I remixed using Adobe Premiere and Audition, OER or public domain images and graphics, and illustrations and animations I created myself using Adobe Illustrator and Animator.  I included multiple choice, multiple answer, or true/false questions for students to answer as they worked through the activity. I did not use a traditional textbook; I provided access to a free, online text from OpenStax for students to use as a reference for anything about  which they needed more information.



Feedback from students was quite positive.  Roughly 2/3 of the way through the course, I asked for feedback.  Comments related to the learning activities include:

• "I actually liked this course. It took a different approach than the run of the mill, read a book, take a test. Doing that I do not retain any information."
• "I really enjoy the Learning activities. This is where I feel that I learn the most. I believe that after this semester concludes, I will remember a lot of what I learned from this course."
• "I really enjoy the learning activity lectures at the beginning of the chapter. They are personal, interactive, and informative."
• "This is one of the first online classes that I've taken and I honestly wish they were all like this class. I think the learning activities are really helpful and make it feel like I'm actually in a classroom learning that lesson for the week."
• "I also like the learning activities and they give a classroom feel...Unlike classrooms, I enjoy being able to rewind and listen again, if necessary."
• "So far, I will say this has been the most interactive course I've taken to date.  I like the videos that are made weekly to cover the important topics and bullet points, and that it's actually the teachers voice."
• "The questions spread throughout the presentation help to give me an idea if I understand what I’ve heard so far, and it’s particularly nice that instead of being penalized for getting them wrong, I can instead go back through the section and try again."

Tips for a Good Mix

I wrote earlier in the Teach Me Tuesday blog about how to avoid death by PowerPoint, and all of those tips apply to creating a good Mix.

Write a Script

I strongly recommend writing a narration in the notes area of your PowerPoint slide before you begin your narration.  You can print the notes view to a PDF to share with your students, for those who may prefer to refer back to written material rather than audio.  It also helps you to keep your narration focused and short. The first semester I used Mix, I didn't narrate with a script.  The second semester, I redid the narrations - using the same slide content - and following a script cut the length of the Mix down by about 30% on average.

Keep It Short

Normally, I say keep instructional videos under ten minutes, if not shorter.  There is some research showing that engagement in video actually falls off after about 2 minutes, although that seems to be longer for instructional video. However, the ability to incorporate questions for assessment into your Mix extends that optimal time.  You can combine segments of 2-6 minutes of narration and video with questions in between to extend that engagement time.

After using Mix for a year and looking at the analytics including average time spent by students viewing a Mix, I suggest that a completed Mix should be no more than about a half hour in length, including all of questions for students to answer, with the optimal length around 15-20 minutes I use three learning activities Mixes each week for the Fall and Spring semesters, and 3-5 per week for the Full Summer semester.  Since students also complete a lab, an social activity, and an interactive homework assignment, that's the equivalent of the amount of time students would spend in class for a 3-credit course.

Be Creative

Don't be afraid to be creative.  No Mix is set in stone, so if something doesn't work the way you think it should have, change it for the next semester. Play around with graphics and animation on your PowerPoint slide to make them visually interesting and to support your content.  Look for OER (Open Education Resources) you can incorporate. Do Google image searches and look for graphics you can use with or without attribution. Think about what YOU like to see in videos on YouTube or Facebook, and try to recreate those looks.

And give me a call if you need some help.  I spent a year learning Adobe products, and while I am by no means an expert, I am getting pretty good at editing videos and drawing illustrations, and I am really good at making the most of PowerPoint graphics and animations.  After making and revising over 40 Mixes over the past year, if I haven't done it already, if it can be done, I can probably help you figure out how to make it work.

Start Slow but Persevere

While Mix is easy to learn, it is time consuming. I wouldn't recommend that anyone do what I did, which was to convert an entire course in one semester, while running the course at the same time. 20:1 is an optimistic development ratio - a 30 minute Mix can take 10 hours to create (another reason to keep them short), so instead of doing all of your instruction in Mixes the first time out, try supplementing what you already do with one Mix per week or topic that covers those concepts students struggle with most. Then add in some more that following semester, and before you know it, you will have a completely interactive course.

To get started with Office Mix, read my post in the Teach Me Tuesday Blog.

On Creativity...or...My Year of Learning Dangerously

"Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast."

- Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

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As I mentioned previously, for a little over a year, I have been taking free online courses from Adobe to learn how to use the Adobe Creative Cloud suite of products.  In those courses, we talk a lot about creativity, what it is, how to assess it, how to encourage it in students.  After 12 courses, comprising almost 300 hours of professional development time, I have come to one conclusion.

Creativity is hard work.

When I talk to colleagues about something I have done for my online courses, I often get a reaction something like this:

"You are so creative! I could never do that."

This assumes creativity is some innate talent that cannot be controlled.  It tends to ignore the effort that goes into innovation. Coming up with a new idea is easy. Making that idea work takes a lot of learning, planning, and trial and error. If you view creativity as something you don't possess, you have no reason to try. You have to believe you have the ability to do it before you try something new.

I already told the story of how I used social media to learn about Pluto and how that experience led me to wanting to ditch the textbook in my online courses. I took a number of MOOCs, and realized I need to make my online courses more visual and interactive. Unfortunately, although I had all sorts of ideas of what I wanted to do, I lacked the technical skills to get them done.

Thus started my Year of Learning Dangerously.

Somehow I stumbled across Adobe's Education Exchange, And there I found heaven in the form of Adobe Generation Professional courses. These are free, online courses, designed specifically to learn how to use Adobe products in education. As an LCCC employee, I could license the entire suite for less than $10 a year..an incredible price! As I said, over the past year, I have completed almost 300 hours of formal coursework.  I spent dozens more learning products not (yet) covered in those courses.  That's about an hour every day for a year. That has nothing to do with creativity and everything to do with commitment.

Taking those courses and learning how to create my own visual learning materials was just part of the equation.  I used Office Mix, an add-on for PowerPoint to create image-based interactive learning activities, that combine the materials I created using what I learned in the #AdobeGenPro courses along with questions that students had to answer while they watched the lecture.

That particular learning activity combines graphics I created using Illustrator:

With an animation I did in Animate:

And a video I "remixed" using public domain material from NASA, recording the narration in Audition and editing the video in Premiere Pro:

In addition to those resources, in a mix I can also include links to web pages, do direct screen capture videos or images, or include simple audio files.

(I like using this example, because it shows the three tools I use most often {Illustrator, Premiere, and Audition} along with one I use infrequently {Animate}, in a learning activity I created from start to finish in one day.)

I also use Spark video - an application I learned in the very first course I took at the start of my Year of Learning Dangerously - to create weekly introductory videos:

The response from students has been very positive. When I asked for feedback, one student said even though I wasn't in the videos, hearing my voice made it seem like he was in a classroom.  Another said she appreciated being able to move back and forth through the lecture to review something she missed. They have their glitches, but since I warn students in advance about some of the problems they might face and how to fix them, they are OK with that.

The advantage to me is I feel like I am in control of my course again, not the publisher, that I am actually teaching, not just grading.  When the Juno probe reached Jupiter, I could update that content in my course right away; I didn't need to wait for a publisher's edition update cycle. When NASA held a press conference about finding several Earth-size planets around another star, I could update the virtual labs on stars and on  exoplanets to include questions about that press conference. I can make the course relevant, up-to-date, and interesting.

That just takes hard work, not "creativity." My astronomy course has 42 learning activities in it, each about 15-30 minutes long.  Each one of those takes about 8 hours to produce, depending on how much I am creating from scratch versus repurposing OER (more on that in another blog). And while I was completing those 300 hours of #AGP courses, I created about two learning activities every week. That's not creative.  That's just insane.

But, I made the commitment to do it, set a schedule, and stuck to it...and my course is the better for it, and my students learn more. Now, instead of telling students that to comment on another students blog, they need to:

1. Click on the In the News Blog link on the Course Menu.
2. Select the Blog on which you want to comment.
3. Locate you name to the right.
4. Click the down arrow under your name to bring up a list of other students.
5. Click on the name of a student to read his or her blog.
6. Click the Comment button.
7. Enter you comment in the Comment box.
8. Click the Add button to submit your comment.
9. Click the arrow under the other student's name on the right to bring up another blog on which to comment

I can show them how to do it:

I realize not everyone wants to learn how to create an avatar in Character Animator or a title sequence in After Effects.  That's the "Oooh, now that's cool!" kind of stuff I like spending time figuring out how to do.

But I don't know any instructor who isn't capable of learning how to use Illustrator or Photoshop to create or modify OER resources for use in their course or to create a screencast and use Premiere to edit it and add simple titles or to make a simple introductory video with Adobe Voice or narrate an interactive lecture with Office Mix.  You just have to be willing to learn something new and put in a little hard work.

Thomas Edison famously said, "Genius is one percent inspiration, ninety nine percent perspiration." I'm committing to trying to provide the inspiration through this blog.  Once a week I will post a new blog, either on an instructional design topic here, an instructional technology topic on Teach Me Tuesday, or a how-to tip on Blackboard Learn Tips and Tricks...if I make the time and I have the inspriation, I'll post more than one.  Let's call it a Year of Blogging Dangerously.

Will you commit to a little perspiration and follow this blog for a year? You might find something to inspire the creativity in you!

My #AdobeGenPro Journey

"and oh ! ever so many lessons to learn ! "

- Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

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This popped up in my Facebook feed this morning:

One year ago today I submitted the first of what would end up being many assignments for lessons I learned from taking Adobe Generation Professional courses.

At that time, I couldn't draw a straight line with a ruler, the only layers I knew about were in triple chocolate cake, and every time I opened Photoshop I would run screaming for the hills.

Now, I can make a straight line walk across the screen, I can manipulate layers to add dimensionality to illustrations, and I can make a never ending glass of beer (which, I admit, is still what I want after using Photoshop). Oh, yea, and the pen tool is my bitch.

The AdobeGenPro courses are very well designed.  They don't try to teach you everything about the software.  They set up a progression of assignments that let you build on skills, so by the end of the course, you can create a useful product. The instructional videos are great; the ones done by Joseph Labrecque for the Animation course were some of best I have ever seen. But most importantly, they teach you how to learn what else you need to know about the software on your own.

I won't say they are without their hiccups.  There are occasions when I am in a live class thinking WTF are you talking about.  My favorite was when the lecturer was talking about the direct selection tool vs. the selection tool.  I said in chat I had no idea what he was talking about, and a fellow student told me it was the white arrow vs. the black arrow.  As my frustration rose, I said I didn't know what SHE was talking about, since I had never opened the software before.  She patiently explained to me where the black arrow and white arrow were, and what they did.  And now I can use them to draw my own HR diagrams to illustrate the Main Sequence turn off point for star clusters.

Why did I take those courses? Because I wanted to redesign my online astronomy course to be more interactive, more visual, and more effective, to bring it into the 21st century.  I wanted to teach my online students, I didn't want them to teach themselves.  I knew I needed new skills to do that, so I started my MOOC journey which eventually led me to the Adobe Education Exchange site and the Adobe Generation Professional courses.

Now, when I describe the frost line and why different materials in the protoplanetary disk coalesce at different distances from the protosun, I can create an diagram in Illustrator to go along with it.

When I try to explain conservation of angular momentum in that protoplanetary disk and how it leads to all of the planets orbiting the Sun in the same direction, I can create a video in Animate to demonstrate that - and I can record the soundtrack to go along with it in Audition.

Using Premiere Pro, I can even edit videos and visualizations created by NASA that are in the public domain. I have spliced videos together, changes timings, and recorded narrations (again, in Audition) so they meet the instructional needs of my students.

And, of course, I use my old friend, the first Adobe product I learned, Spark Video, to create introductory videos for units in my online courses.

There is still a lot I want to do, primarily using Animate to do things like show the proton-proton chain and CNO cycle nuclear fusion reactions or the path of stars on the HR diagram as they evolve, but I haven't made the time to do those yet.  But, that's the beauty of teaching - you are never done.  This semester I'm improving on the work I did last semester, and next semester I will do things better than I did this semester.

The only thing holding me back is making the time, because there are only so many hours in the day. That's one reason I haven't blogged (at least on this blog) for over a year, even though there are things I want to blog about.  I have had the same sweater on the needles for over a year now.  And if only I could teach my cats how to do housework...but hey, how often do you really need to dust or vacuum...

I know many of you who read this far are saying, "Well, sure, you can do it, Karen, you know how to use technology." I know that, because many of you have said that to my face when I show you some of the things I created.

Frankly, it's a little insulting. I'm just not that special. I don't have a magic "knows everything about every software product ever made" gene.  What I do have is a willingness to try something new and the determination not to give up at the first sign of trouble. If I did, I would have given up halfway through that first course, when I ran into problems with layers in Adobe Mix and Fix.

What I am is willing to put in a lot of time and effort to make this change. Anyone can take the same courses I took and create the tools your students need to learn, if you are willing to put in the same time and effort, because I won't sugarcoat it.  Creativity is hard work.  I just think the pay off is worth it. There is also something very satisfying when you can update your skills on your AdobeEdEx profile.

Because now, a year later, I have the skills and experience to  be able to, with some level of confidence, open up After Effects for the first time and create a simple opening title sequence for videos I am working on for our Distance Education web site.

And I learned all of that without ever opening a textbook...but that's a story for another post.

So please, look into the AdobeGenPro courses.  The next one up is digital video starting on May 1 and running through the middle of June.  Nothing bad happens to you if you don't finish the course (*cough*UX to UI*cough*)(*cough*twice*cough*).  But it you are willing to take a chance and put in some hard work - the same thing you ask your students to do - something good might happen.