Tag seamless learning

#TEDxCoventryUniversity- #Gamification and #ExperienceDesign

Sylvester Arnab 2 Comments

IMG_6325The first TEDx at Coventry went pretty well I must say. Topics covered include recruitment, sustainable building, cyber security, the future of cyborg technology, films and the power of serious games and gamification. It was great to be part of the event as a speaker and share my ideas, which I hope have inspired some on the day. My talk was very much about the potential of gamification in designing the experience of a super learner. See previous blog posts: Gamification and Experience Design and Super learner in a hybrid space.

Sustaining engagement with learning within a formal context is a great challenge and on top of this, learning within an informal context is highly disconnected from the formal narrative of education. It is essential to connect different types of learning in order to contextualise the process. The use of gameful design will allow fun to be injected into the learning process and experience, which can potentially sustain long term engagement and promote retention. IMG_6334

Education as a non-linear adventure “game”, a Hero’s Journey, will allow exploratory and experiential learning to be encouraged, which will allow learners to expand their learning experience above and beyond their formal and linear education. As a designer of our own experience, we will begin to understand the context of our education and the impact it will have in the real world. In order to play the game well, we need to know how it works.

Looking for a home for your PhD research? Or would you like to collaborate with us?

Sylvester Arnab 3 Comments

The blending of digital and physical spaces is changing the way we approach teaching and learning.This opens up opportunities for traditional approaches to be taken apart and put back together. There are pedagogical and technological questions to be addressed.

As part of the forward looking Disruptive Media Learning Lab (DMLL) based at Coventry University (the university has recently been awarded Modern University of the year and best in Student Experience), I’m excited about these opportunities and the various topics that can be explored and experimented. Specific areas I’m interested in include:

  • gameful and persuasive design (including game-based learning and gamification),
  • pervasive technology and learning
  • the understanding of engagement in gaming in terms of the emotions that motivate and how these would influence the way we learn
  • alternate and mixed reality in teaching and learning
  • seamless learning experience in a digital saturated ecosystem
  • …

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DMLL is designed as a cross-University experimental unit that will provide support for new and on-going pedagogic development in new and disruptive technological spaces. The Lab draws upon areas from which the University has established a track record of innovation, e.g, the Serious Games Institute, which has pioneered the use of games science in educational content delivery and the Media Department’s teaching and learning ‘experiments’ with Open Media Classes.

We are excited to work with keen researchers.

Please contact me privately if you are interested to do a PhD with us or if you would like to collaborate with us in R&D within the area of disruptive media and technology.

Flipping education seamlessly

Sylvester Arnab 1 Comment

The advancement in technology and the emergence of digital natives has sparked a transformation, where teaching and learning is moving away from the one-size-fits-all model. The traditional brick-and-mortar model of delivery is facing disruption from technologies that are promoting time and location-independent access to knowledge.

The role of a teacher is slowly evolving from teaching to facilitating. This leads to learners being given the opportunity to apply concepts and theories in classrooms rather than merely learning them. Learners are now able to explore various concepts and knowledge outside of the classroom via their mobile devices for instance and use these findings to enrich the classroom lessons. Digital environments such as social platforms, crowd sourcing platforms, YouTube videos, Google, podcast, blogs and educational games offer opportunities for self-directed and exploratory learning to be promoted.

Activity learning rather than instructional is key to the Flipped Classroom movement. Flipped classroom is “turning education on its head” by basically delivering instructions (concepts, theories, etc.) online and outside of the classroom context and moving “homework” into the classroom[1]. Learners will apply what they have learned in the classroom to enhance their understanding with teachers acting as facilitators. This offers opportunities for various technology-enhanced learning approaches (including game-based learning and digital-based gamification) to be experimented within this flipped context.

This self-directed approach however poses challenges with respect to effective monitoring of activities and how different media are being used and their influence in promoting learning. How can we encourage and ensure seamless learning experience? Seamless learning[2] could become a highly efficient approach in storing and retrieving information. Convergences of technologies and the learning analytics approach may help connect learning across different settings, technologies and activities to support seamless learning experience within the flipped classroom context.

The evolution of pedagogy is influenced by the way teaching and learning is being disrupted by the emerging technologies and digital culture. We should embrace it and run with it.

At the Disruptive Media Learning Lab (DMLL), we are keen to develop a robust framework to support such evolution of teaching and learning practices. Could gamification be a wrapper to encapsulate, manage and optimise our experience in consuming, curating and creating digital learning resources?