Designing a micro-learning session

Activity 8

In the last blog I mentioned about my view of you in-world orientation places and how they use different approaches for helping newbeis. In this blog, the focus will be on out-world source called “Global Kids Curriculum (GKCx)“ and the method it use to motivated users to try and learn new things so that  I will finally be able to come up with I own learning environment in-world used GKCx methods. The curriculum is divided into 9 main levels, each including some related modules with predefined missions for students to carry out. I’ve been asked to choose one modules out of 4 modules (appearance, walking and flying, talk a close look and chat) within level one as part of my weekly activity and develop my own environment based on that.

I read through all of these modules and have look at the others and realized that appearance is one of the most complicated actions with level one and this module is being followed by level two “avatar: cloth“ module. Moreover, from my personal experience of teaching students how to use SL, I realized that they will prefer to fix they look before they want to do anything else (specially management and politic students) which give them a sense of ownership (at first stage) over their avatar and reflects them more than default avatars. This usually gives them the confidence to interactive with other avatars; not feeling that they are different.

Based on these points, I decided to design my environment based on “appearances“ to that I will be able to adopt it for “cloths“ as well. But the main point considered in the design and development should be following points:

• Allows the development of the Mission’s Powers
• It’s engaging and playful
• Complies with the list of principles for an effective design of an orientation session.

So this is my design scenario J  how much it fits the following characteristics you can judge…

“ An avatars will come to the orientation place, and what they will see is a notice board asking “this is a game that you can choose to look like either Merlin Monroe or G.W. Bush at the end of them, decision is put to you… follow the light and click on them to guild you through”. So basically at that point avatars will start a game with a mission to look like someone and now they have to start follow the lights.

The lights are sequential so you should pass to activate the other one so in each stage users don’t know exactly what is waiting for them.  Lights are standpoints which users will click on them and get the position of changing appearance. By users click and stand a notice board will appear with information in each stage to help them change their appearance such as the shape, skin, hair and …

Choosing different genders can even help users to learn how to switch between different avatars as well and later the chooses can be changed or even for advanced avatars become randomized. At the end of the path, there can be a mirror to show them how they look and a notice board of how they can take a picture of that they created and compare with this what they decided to look at first place.

This is not only an individual design but also can be used for group learning. As long as most of the objects are invisible until the user reaches there so basically they don’t need much of a pre-designed space. They can be copied so there will be some number of them to go through and finally other student or course constructors can judge who the winner of the game is.”

This is the best activity I have done so far…i love thinking about the next interesting idea to develop. I’m not sure how successful this idea will be but I think this would a nice experience for newbies and I would try to develop it in SL but the main challenge for me will be scripting them as long as I’m lazy (really lazy) when it comes to scripting and possibility it will take some time to finish it. 

So dear readers feel free to contact me if you are interested in this project and I’m sure we will enjoy it more if we work together.