[De La Salle University] 'Think to be Entertained': Re-purposing Canvas LMS Features for Games-based, Assisted Learning

One of the things that I've noticed in the three years of going online for past facilitation and then consistently going hybrid, well what I've noticed is that, the question of how to increase student engagement remains among the challenges of a faculty. And I'd like to say that, this kind of tendency has to do with the fact that that there's this frequent replication of the brick and mortar setup of the classroom onto the, the the conference call setup. Depending on which university you're coming from, we have MS Teams, there's also Zoom. And, that brought about that tendency to lecture so as to avoid dead air. So, yeah, my topic is think to be entertained. It's, it's inspired by, experiences that we've had during the, the pandemic because if we think about if we think about some of the form of pleasant distractions that we've had in order for us to keep our mental health in check, some of us like to binge watch on Netflix.

There are those of us who followed on a favorite game. And the thing is, we can't just look at these spaces as modes of entertainment alone. If anything, the reason why we find these things entertaining is because they make us think. So why don't we take that concept and bring it into the educational setup? Online and hybrid learning presents to us an opportunity to think outside the box. What will happen if we will actually take the the process which is latent in the way we read these different kinds of medium and we mix it with the integrity that goes into the class facilitation that we do, the, the the course materials that we're assigning to our students.

What if we take all that and package it into something entertaining? Yeah. So, yeah, that's me. I'm a, I'm an advocate of the learner centered paradigm. And, for those of you who are not entirely familiar with that concept, under the learner centered paradigm, we are not allowed to do full full lectures because the intention is to help our students or to guide our students into developing their own insights. The students and the faculties are co producers of learning.

So we can't do that under the setup, which is instructional paradigm. Under instructional paradigm, like lecture now. The lecture the instruct instructional paradigm involves the faculty just sitting up front and doing nothing but talking. And what happens then is that, all of this information that they're giving to their students, the students would then take it and bank it into their system. And assessments would often have, have to do with replicating whatever has been taught to them.

So what we're looking at here is my suggestion of using an adventure game approach towards structuring a course in Canvas. So the adventure game interface was my response to class facilitation back when the world stopped in twenty twenty. So it's a learner centered space. It's made possible with repurposing existing subscriptions, Canvas specifically, and free software. I like to use Adobe Reader for varied reasons.

And, yeah, the plus side of going with these two particular software is that they can they're guaranteed to run across devices. And you don't need any, sophisticated, you don't need any sophisticated hardware in order for it to work. So whether your student likes to use a desktop or if they're on their phone all the time, at least, this setup would still run. And it's made possible with repurposing existing subscriptions. Yeah.

Okay. Sorry. I'm already done with that. It's a remix of learning in a time of stress. Yeah.

I want to highlight that. Because the humanities, we've encountered this in the form of TV series, music, video gaming, and whatnot. These were our pleasant distractions during the time of quarantine. And, yeah, since it's about interactivities, a successful experience would involve practicing how to follow instructions and practice basic reading comprehension. That's pretty much at the foundation of every single critical thinking out activity out there.

It's how you could extrapolate information from the different variations of data. So what does this design look like, and how does it work? The adventure game interface design is about emulating the mechanics and principles that go into a point and click adventure game. The splash screen and menu greets the student and is constructed from a spread of sprites on a Canvas page. The menu system intends to do away with the navigational bar, but it would be helpful to restrict the available items on the navigation pane. We may want to limit the listing to announcements, modules, people, grades, and the Zoom app, and this is to avoid confusion.

The modules section can be used for a master list or cheat approach where key documents and content are straightforwardly available to the student. An adventure game style needs an overarching plot to set the interactivities and tasks into context and justification. Non playable characters assist in telling the story, facilitates in some puzzle games, and conducts interactive conversations with the student. NPCs also compensate for the reduced physical visibility of the professor. What you see right here is one of two main NPCs in the design.

This scene places the canvas discussion thread front and center and previously connected to a page, shaping the interaction into a custom, semi linear one. Higenbana Agatha is seen in some context discussions and toolkit discussions, which focus on skills refinement. Doctor. Jay is the course facilitator's counterpart in the design. She provides answers to frequently asked questions and also facilitates the more specialized portion of course topics, as well as task feedback in the form of interactive lessons.

The game map organizes course content into specific locations. The computer room, for instance, is where submissions are uploaded and where suggested online references are accessed. The cafe is where toolkit lessons are conducted. The lecture hall houses recordings, interactive lessons, and simulated events, the latter two in PDF format with anchoring to discussion threads, among other material. The exhibit hall contains interactive PDFs of lessons and tasks conveyed in exhibit setup.

As the motivation is function in style, it's when the design gets put together where we get the full picture. A regular class day would require the student to check the journal that is located in the reading room. The journal is a key fixture to the interactive design as it contains details and instructions on the topic and tasks for the session, but most importantly, in terms of its potential to contain a variety of information to extrapolate from. Here we have a commonplace book consisting of the description of the task, which is a riddle, and some clippings and images for the student to inspect and draw comparisons from. Pertinent videos are also in the multimedia room and documents in the shelves.

These may not be outrightly indicated in the journal because we're also testing for students' habits, initiative, and sleuthing capabilities. These contents are constructed from canvas pages with images and this time text style hyperlinks for a simplified and clean view. To give the assessment part the same look and feel, we apply the conversational approach featuring NPCs particular to that task. This example shows the conversation being conducted using a Canvas quiz. Instead of a single pour of the questions into one quiz, we would limit the length to one to two questions because of a branching of outcomes and specialized questions depending on their responses.

This particular take on the quiz format would only work if the student is answering the task on a browser because of how they would need to open the continuation in a new tab before saving the responses. Present disadvantage of using the quiz in a conversation like setup is that the feedback is at the end of the quiz instead of immediately following the student's response to the question. Hopefully, Canvas will eventually have an option as to when feedback can show up. This next application of quizzes involves a mix of multiple choice as well as essay. Essay does not need to be lengthy, and it would give the facilitator insight into the confidence of the student and even how they arrived at their idea.

Here's the branch out once more. It's fine if we only have one link. It has to do with continuations. Another valuable quiz build would involve the ordering question. It has to do with the deliberation framework where answers that are all perfectly valid and possible are placed to the fore.

So based on the evidence that the student went over, which answer is the most possible culprit? To give the course a more point and click authentic feel, a portion to the tasks could also include a missing piece plus puzzle assembly component like this one, constructed from images and canvas pages, likewise strategically interconnected by text hyperlinks. Hide the piece somewhere, have the student discover it, and then assemble an important document containing information needed in an assessment. As the intention is to have fun while looking for information, these types of puzzles are not intended to be graded. Wrong inputs would result in hints, but not the answer. And we can also repurpose the fill in the blank question on the Canvas quiz by turning it into a locked box containing information or bonus points.

Repurposing technology is not solely about maximizing features, but it's an exercise of imagination. We think to be entertained. So there are some things to consider when going with the adventure game design on Canvas. First off, it's possible to encounter lagging or broken content such as images not loading, and this typically has to do with the Internet connection stability or integrity. And we usually see this happen with the point and click, content which is on pages, but, of course, it's not exclusive just to that.

There have been instances in which images refuse to load on quizzes also. So anything that involves graphics. Among the possible workarounds would be to think about the purpose of your design. So what is your intent in using the adventure game approach in your class? So if you plan to use the interactivity in a synchronous online session, which features your conference call, then it may be a good idea to just load it in a personal course card or yeah. Load it into a card.

I don't know if it's still there are free accounts, although limited ones over on Canvas. If your university is not giving you the option to, to create your own course cards, or you can put it in your sandbox, whichever is more, more convenient for you. And, yeah, you would have to do a screen share from there. If the interactivity, however, is part of a an of an assigned learning material for the student to explore, then that would be the instance that it should be loaded into the shared course card. So the last effort would be to create a pure text version of the overall design.

So, I don't want to ask about ages either. So there may be some members of our audience here who have played text based games before, and they may want to use that as an inspiration instead of using the, the heavy graphics. The advantage of that would be well, students are thinking much harder, and it it's it's an additional challenge for students that way. It's going to really make your students think. Now as a class facilitation strategy, it's possible to use Canvas even in a face to face discussion setup.

And it has to do with conducting what I would like to, bring in from popular culture called let's Plays. Okay? So Let's Plays are popularized in YouTube. These are typically recordings of gameplay, with audio commentary. And the player would talk about insights and realizations that they have during the gameplay, and they would interrogate the text in the game. And they also have their reactions among other things.

So these images that you see right here are the Canvas adventure game interface at work, and, this is these are images taken from my science technology and the society class at the De La Salle University. What you see here on the left is well, we have three students who are co facilitating the session. They have been assigned one interactivity for them to, have their ideas and well, the the interactivity itself also has questions within it interlaced for them to, to prepare for and to have their own answers on. But the whole point of doing a let's play is to increase student engagement. So how do they do that? Yeah.

They would do a regular let's play, and they would ask audiences questions. And this is before they would answer the discussion questions that are embedded in the game itself. The setup of this particular classroom is very convenient because the student can go around, as you can see. The whole point of this is to produce learning, co create learning, but to make sure that fun is happening at the same time. The fun part is one of the most important elements.

So I'm just going to read it since it's pretty much straightforward. Who would make good Let's Players? Anyone, just as long as they're willing. It doesn't matter if someone is inexperienced or not because they are going to be receiving guidance from the facilitator beforehand about things that they have to prepare for. Signing up for Let's Plays is also on a volunteer basis because we cannot force our students to comply to specific activities under the learner centered paradigm. They need the, the freedom to join particular activities.

Those who are good at or can practice anchored thinking. Those who can engage the audience, encourage them to participate. Ideally, someone, who is spontaneous and with with a sense of humor because that's part of the characteristics of a let's play. And we have to keep in mind that no one needs to be a gamer in order to enjoy a let's play. So if we're going to be turning this into we're going to be turning this into an actual assessment, we have to remember that it's a co facilitation strategy.

So it's a combination of talking and having actual responses and ideas in line with the interactivity. So, if we're gonna be grading it, it's in the quality of the responses, post in the interactivity, the ability of the person to make association between ideas explored in the interactivities together with whatever they already have in stock. And this can be verbal as in in class or they can write the responses in the discussions. So all that effort, but does it work? I'm gonna say yes. My favorite remark here is the one at the very bottom on the right.

Accommodating to her students without sacrificing integrity, because the interface can be used both synchronously and asynchronously. All of the modules, for the momentary lack of a better term, are left open for them to catch up on just in case, yeah, just in case they have a personal matter to attend to. So things to remember. Yeah. Designs are tools.

These are not a replacement for faculty. Hybrid learning is about the facilitator's ability to use their imagination because if we want to encourage and engage ideas, we need to give our students something to think about. K? And this should be beyond the regular documents. And that said, there's no such thing as a single effective technique or a design. My advice is to for you to look for a particular genre or facilitation style that fits you or something that you can make your own because your technique is what expresses your authenticity.

And now would be a good time to explore the chances of combining your passion with your purpose in the classroom. And we do this because students look for sincerity in the classroom and it shows in the way we run classroom. Last but not least, and this holds true for all creations and attempts at innovation, we have to remember that learner agency is a thing. K? There's always going to be Susan's and Robert's. So that said, always just continue refining your facilitation strategy.

This image right here is the paper and, journal reference of which I had published about this design back in twenty twenty two. And if you want to talk in or get a more detailed, information with regards to strategy, here's my information. Thank you so very much.