Heuristic Evaluation for Serious Immersive Games and M-instruction

© Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2016. Two fast growing areas for technology-enhanced learning are serious games and mobile instruction (M-instruction or M-Learning). Serious games are ones that are meant to be more than just entertainment. They have a serious use to educate or promote other types of activity. Immersive Games frequently involve many players interacting in a shared rich and complex-perhaps web-based-mixed reality world, where their circumstances will be multi and varied. Their reality may be augmented and often self-composed, as in a user-defined avatar in a virtual world. M-instruction and M-Learning is learning on the move; much of modern computer use is via smart devices, pads, and laptops. People use these devices all over the place and thus it is a natural extension to want to use these devices where they are to learn. This presents a problem if we wish to evaluate the effectiveness of the pedagogic media they are using. We have no way of knowing their situation, circumstance, education background and motivation, or potentially of the customisation of the final software they are using. Getting to the end user itself may also be problematic; these are learning environments that people will dip into at opportune moments. If access to the end user is hard because of location and user self-personalisation, then one solution is to look at the software before it goes out. Heuristic Evaluation allows us to get User Interface (UI) and User Experience (UX) experts to reflect on the software before it is deployed. The effective use of heuristic evaluation with pedagogical software [1] is extended here, with existing Heuristics Evaluation Methods that make the technique applicable to Serious Immersive Games and mobile instruction (M-instruction). We also consider how existing Heuristic Methods may be adopted. The result represents a new way of making this methodology applicable to this new developing area of learning technology

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Successful Instructional Diagrams by Ric Lowe, London, Kogan Page, 1993. ISBN: 0–7494–0711–5

The future of technology enhanced active learning – a roadmap

The notion of active learning refers to the active involvement of learner in the learning process, capturing ideas of learning-by-doing and the fact that active participation and knowledge construction leads to deeper and more sustained learning. Interactivity, in particular learnercontent interaction, is a central aspect of technology-enhanced active learning. In this roadmap, the pedagogical background is discussed, the essential dimensions of technology-enhanced active learning systems are outlined and the factors that are expected to influence these systems currently and in the future are identified. A central aim is to address this promising field from a best practices perspective, clarifying central issues and formulating an agenda for future developments in the form of a roadmap

Trialing project-based learning in a new EAP ESP course: A collaborative reflective practice of three college English teachers

Currently in many Chinese universities, the traditional College English course is facing the risk of being ‘marginalized’, replaced or even removed, and many hours previously allocated to the course are now being taken by EAP or ESP. At X University in northern China, a curriculum reform as such is taking place, as a result of which a new course has been created called ‘xue ke’ English. Despite the fact that ‘xue ke’ means subject literally, the course designer has made it clear that subject content is not the target, nor is the course the same as EAP or ESP. This curriculum initiative, while possibly having been justified with a rationale of some kind (e.g. to meet with changing social and/or academic needs of students and/or institutions), this is posing a great challenge for, as well as considerable pressure on, a number of College English teachers who have taught this single course for almost their entire teaching career. In such a context, three teachers formed a peer support group in Semester One this year, to work collaboratively co-tackling the challenge, and they chose Project-Based Learning (PBL) for the new course. This presentation will report on the implementation of this project, including the overall designing, operational procedure, and the teachers’ reflections. Based on discussion, pre-agreement was reached on the purpose and manner of collaboration as offering peer support for more effective teaching and learning and fulfilling and pleasant professional development. A WeChat group was set up as the chief platform for messaging, idea-sharing, and resource-exchanging. Physical meetings were supplementary, with sound agenda but flexible time, and venues. Mosoteach cloud class (lan mo yun ban ke) was established as a tool for virtual learning, employed both in and after class. Discussions were held at the beginning of the semester which determined only brief outlines for PBL implementation and allowed space for everyone to autonomously explore in their own way. Constant further discussions followed, which generated a great deal of opportunities for peer learning and lesson plan modifications. A reflective journal, in a greater or lesser detailed manner, was also kept by each teacher to record the journey of the collaboration. At the end of the semester, it was commonly recognized that, although challenges existed, the collaboration was overall a success and they were all willing to continue with it and endeavor to refine it to be a more professional and productive approach