Contents
Presenter
Kathryn Drumm – Educational Technologist, LEaD
Talk
It can be difficult for staff to find the time to engage in training for educational technologies. As a way to encourage staff to experiment with using new activities or systems, we created a self-paced puzzle-themed advent calendar Moodle as a low-stakes way to encourage engagement.
A Christmas advent calendar-themed module was designed to introduce staff to Moodle tools and other educational technologies. The module team had several aims:
- To engage staff in technologies in a low-stakes way.
- To model the use of iterative quizzes.
- To model the use of checkpoints throughout the module
- To model the use of gamification and playfulness in learning
The module ran for 12 working days and was based on a narrative puzzle. A clue was revealed after each the daily activity was completed, leading to the solution. The narrative element was designed to engage attention throughout and discourage dropping out. The playful tone of the module and the gamified activities allowed for “experimentation, practice, failure and learning from mistakes.” (Whitton and Mosely, 2019)
Participants could join at any time and work through existing clues. Based on feedback from previous years, it was not compulsory to complete each activity before getting access to the next day.
To ensure that participants did not give up, there were two points throughout the module when there were the opportunities to self-enrol in a group that had access to additional supporting information.
The module contained a quiz which showcased assessment as learning. Questions were deliberately difficult to answer on the first attempt but feedback was supplied after each attempt to guide them to the answer. Marden et al (2013) suggest that low-stakes quizzes with multiple attempts are effective in improving student outcomes.
The team received good feedback and useful recommendations for next Christmas’ module. They also received a recommendation to promote the module more widely.
The presentation will consist of an overview of how the module was created and the suggestions for how it could be adapted. Attendees can try one of the puzzles and can enrol on the module at a later date.
References
Marden NY, et al. Online feedback assessments in physiology: effects on students’ learning experiences and outcomes. Adv Physiol Educ. 2013;37(2):192–200.
Whitton, N; Moseley, A, Playful learning: events and activities to engage adults 2019, Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, New York.
