Improving Student Engagement With Educational MaterialDeon Takpuie

Reitumetse Chaka

Project Proposal

Aim

• Increase student academic interactions

• Gamification is the chosen technique

• Applied to the Vula forums and wiki tools

Problem Statement

• Good pass rates are key to University reputation

• It is desirable to achieve this cost-effectively

• Vula tools are underutilized (Donovan 2012)

BackgroundImproving user interaction

• Human computer interaction heuristics

• University of Ulster uses gamification.

• Mobile device multimedia input and display optimisation. Eg: Micro-Blog (Gaonkar et al. 2008)

Research Questions

• How much quicker can forum access become via a suitably designed mobile interface?

• Is the gamified forum more usable and appealing the original tools?

• Do a gamified tools add value to the students learning experience as perceived by them?

Solution Approach

• Mobileo Optimising for Ubiquitous use: Improve ability to interact

with the tools anywhere.o Optimising Mobile interface: Applying interface design to

improve content delivery on tools.

• Gamificationo Improving Participation: Applying a goal based layer into

the use of Sakai tools.o Rewards System: Assigning participants a rewards and

experience levels.

Forum BackgroundForums Background

• Improved pass rates at Ulster University

• Farmville has 40 million users

Wiki BackgroundResearch shows that voluntary participation has a positive

influence on learnability (Greitzer et al. 2007)

Division Of WorkBack End

• Models

• Controllers

Front End (Wiki & Forums)

• Views

Plugins

• Artificial Intelligence

External

• Sakai (Vula) Interface

SolutionPhase1

• Paper prototype - Participatory Design

• Back End Work

Phase2

• Implement and test optimized forum tool

Phase3

• Wiki gamification and add Artificial Intelligence

Evaluation Plan

• Revolutionary testing for paper prototype

• Speed of performing popular tasks.

• Post user interviews to determine usability

Key Success Factors

• Navigation speed to access information

• Usability/Ease of use of tool

• Perceived value of tool to student

Risk IdentificationRisk Impact Probability Mitigation

Failure to meet project Milestones.

High Medium Good weekly planning and communication.

Data loss. High Medium Backup on external DB and/or cloud storage.

Group member falls ill. Medium Medium Share knowledge amongst group.

Vula authentication and Interfacing.

High Low Early testing of system and Vula administration.

Ethical Permission Denied.

High Low Application made as soon as possible.

Conflict within the group.

Medium Low Conflict resolution communication.

Deliverables

• Web Presence

• Poster presentation

• Project Report

• Project Application Implementation

Timeline

Conclusion

• Possible to improve student engagementusing existing tools

• Possible to improve usability and speed of Vula tools