From Video Serious Games to Moocs & Collaborative Platforms
CRI Edtech Master Projects : A story of exploring the motivation, engagement, transformation of learners in order to take action on the current education model
This article won’t be a long, detailed in content, quotes and references white & grey literature. It is intended to be a short story showcasing 3 of my work during my much loved experience at the C.R.I.
MOLETRIS
Objectives : Design a scientific serious games for Graduate students in BioChemistry
Results :
- Game Design Document
- Scientific Game Contest Poster
Team :
Nicolas, Serge, Sofiane
Personal Comments :
Collaboration is a hard task but with demultiplied benefits
Research… well I am quite convinced that teaming with a novice in the matter you want to teach on is a huge advantage and necessary challenging element. Experts talking among themselves rarely know how to adapt their discourse…
Creation is a fun, iterative part where you forget all the difficulty when it comes to life
Testing and Evaluation design were already reflected on. However, when it came to develop it and go on operative mode, well... We failed it and we know why. It all comes down to motivation and team management.
Communication. The easy part. Also because the Cite des Sciences and The CRI GameLab gave us a good hand ;-)
MINECRAFT IN EDUCATION CRI STUDENT CLUB
Life is hard. I am a real hero for my kids because I am a expert in Minecraft and talked at conferences at La Cité des Sciences. If I could add that I’d like to launch a start-up using Minecraft THEN I would be their role model FOR EVER.
But Minecraft is not a new Unicorn name. It is just-a-video-game.
Immersive, Collaborative, Creative, at least that. But much more especially if you witness a class full of students in action using Minecraft, then you’ll understand.
Academic fields like Mathematics, Chemistry, History, Geography, Writing… but also, Ecology, Agriculture… or Citizenship. There are many concrete examples and a couple of them are happening in France too, thanks to some very courageous and innovative teachers.
So researching this item was fun and particularly insightful because I realized this approach was really getting the interests of hundreds of thousands of teachers abroad, in the States, in the Nordic countries, but also in Public Organizations (local and international) such as the U.N or Public State Departments.
Incredible immersion, attractiveness and endless creativity… This sandgame is a undoubtful asset for the Education ecosystem. Also there is an active but uneven Community (Minecraft and Minetest), ready to help.
For the near future, my opinion is that the larger adoption thing is at stake and will evolve according to the way Microsoft handles the takeover (of both Minecraft and MinecraftEDU). Personally, I would be eager to study the evaluation framework in order to document and motivate other teachers to jump in and make their students happy.
In the end, I would gladly vote for it as an initiative to help the whole “Drop-out” catastrophy, wouldn’t you ?
HACKtonBAC vs MOOCtonTPE
Initiative Objectives : Research, define and present a solution to disrupt the French Baccalaureat in an intelligent & transformational way, using a framework of digital humanities / citizenship / literacies.
Transformed objective : Digitalize an Interdisciplinary, Collaborative and Project-Based activity using creative inspiring methodology and critical thinking best practices.
Public : “Première” Baccalaureat Students and teachers/coachs
Results : Design of a Collaborative Platform supporting Students and teachers during their TPE Projects, from September to February.
Team : Gabrielle
Comments on the pedagogy (Methods, Tools) :
The Design Thinking method is being used more and more broadly in the Primary Education system, cf Eduscol website, Batisseurs des Possibles initiatives… We bet it would support the TPE (Travaux Personnels Encadrés) process in an innovative way while providing many fun and easy-to-use tools to help the students ideate, see their world around, find meaningful subjects and define a acceptable problematic.
On the other hand, as we watch carefully how the educational ecosystem is facing the MOOC revolution, we wish to accelerate this revelation to a younger learning audience who will soon enter University. These are new tools, new pedagogy to embrace and they are one key to better adapt to the fast-paced and increasingly complex environment.
Our Promise :
All along this Research and Project development, we kept in mind the students Main concern at this particular time of their studies. In fact, because the TPE is the FIRST Baccalaureat Exam, it is undoubtedly very stressful and often induces feelings of loneliness, even despair.
It was clear that we would make a promise to propose a solution to support the team work, the coaching between and from teachers, the necessary inspiration from research into the projects, the Maker mindset and the basic often digitalized tools to present and communicate the team results.
We also defined that this lifeline would be playful, inspiring and contrary to the status quo, that it would be a strong baseline for future personal portfolios.
