Online Learning Amidst Covid-19 Pandemic

 

陈伟豪.全面实践远程教学的契机

马林学者

 

不管行动管制令是否会在6月9日后继续延长，估计苏丹依德利斯教育大学（依大）的学生在2020年下半年都不会回到校园上课。取而代之的是从6月第一周就开始的远程教学。

在冠病肆虐以前，所有的讲师都得在大学的网上学习管理系统里上载教学计划、讲义、最少3个活动以及最少两项评估作业，并要在每个学期的第八周用该系统的界面向系主任汇报教学进度。由于这个强制性的系统使用是跟每个讲师的年度教学表现评估挂钩，故几乎所有讲师都会至少满足所有指标，也免影响时年工资的增长──除非已达顶薪。

当时，只有很少数的讲师自主探索并不断地尝试把各种各样的教育科技应用到讲堂、实验室和虚拟世界。探索成功的讲师会像去年的我那样，被推荐角逐国家学术（教学）奖；尝试失败的则可能像2016年的我那样，获得一班学生们在学期末的差评，得反思改过自新。如今那些善于应用教育科技的讲师都成了大家取经学习的对象，算是熬出头了!

首次实践居家办公的依大讲师们在行管令期间可以拨电话或透过社交媒体向各自的学生查询，了解他们能否在各自家乡的网速和上网工具等软硬体实际条件下应付网上教学。了解详情后，讲师们就可以准备各自的远程教学方案。基本上，依大学术发展中心把远程教学分成网上教学和离线(offline)教学两大类。

最原始的离线远程教学方案跟我在上世纪末自修台湾的中华函授课程相似，不能上网且没有电脑或智能手机的学生会在开课前收到所有可供自学用的教学材料、测验试卷以及回邮信封。如果学生有电脑或智能手机但不能上网，讲师们可以把材料存放在U盘，感觉就像我在拉曼学院出考题那样，得离线处理。在测验和评估学生表现方面，可以用智能手机发短信或彩信后让学生在限定的时间内答题。

一旦确定学生有经济能力上网，讲师就可以依照自己和学生家乡可达到的最低网速和宽带来决定是否应该使用实时视频教学。以我在丹绒马林家的20Mbps宽带来看，时下流行的实时视频会议软件并不足以应付多人同时视讯上课。因此，我会把每一个小时的课浓缩成一个7分钟的优管（YouTube）视频，然后把链接和该讨论的问题通过WhatsApp发给课程群组。学生得制作一个博客，以呈现个人在整个学期的学习心得、反思视频、作业以及参考资料等。而测验则是会使用Socrative或谷歌表格等免费且务实的应用程序来执行。值得一提的是，大学的期末考试在新常态下消失了！

在教学新常态底下，教育工作者都得利用既有或自创的教育科技来留住学生，甚至是保住饭碗。我的几个在私立大学任教的博士生告诉我，现在我国的高等教育，尤其是长期依赖外国学生的私立学府，在面对外国学生无法入境的困境后新生率急速下跌，这势必掀起教育界的减薪与裁员潮。或许，各个私立大学领导可以参考宾夕法尼亚州立大学的“世界校园”，让所有上远程教学班的学生们愿意缴付亲身到实体校园上课的昂贵学费，令该校成为美国最多在世校友的大学。

作者 ： 陈伟豪
文章来源 ： 星洲日报 2020-05-15

Vocabulary learned from marking students' assignments (MMX3113)

1. Game mechanics with parkour system. 

2. squalid: (of a place) extremely dirty and unpleasant, especially as a result of poverty or neglect.

3. open world playground

4. grappling hook: grapnel 

5. Volatile (Dying Light 2015): an infected that only emerges during the night.

6. weapon-based combat and parkour

7. zip lining 

8. infiltrate (enter or gain access to (an organization, place, etc.) surreptitiously and gradually, especially in order to acquire secret information) a quarantine zone 

9. gauze 纱布

10. camera bobbling (晃动) effects 

11. gruesome (可怕的) zombie massacres (屠杀)

12. carve up (瓜分) zombie hordes (部落)

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Multiplayer modes: Team Deathmatch (a mode of play in which the aim is to kill the characters controlled by other players.), Freeze Tag, Warpath (战径), Domination （统治） and Clan Arena. 

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Massive battle-royale game

Regicide: 杀人剂

从《循迹漫聊》中得到的启发

“。。。设备总有过时的一天，必须得有人才能不断地改进、不断地创新。德国和日本这两个战败国之所以能够在废墟当中迅速地崛起，到今天还是世界排名靠前的响当当国家，为什么？厂房你能给炸没了，铁路您给掀翻了，烟筒你能给炸倒，只要有人，就有一切。”

袁腾飞聊《复仇者联盟》

“这些国家，它跟那个发达国家的差距不仅仅是在工作上，不仅仅是在生产上，观念上差距太大，所以你愣攒在一块儿，我觉得不是一件好事儿。。。您交朋友都得大家水平差不多的交朋友。。。”

“真正的知识份子要重学问，轻学位。”【评金庸晚年追求剑桥博士学位】

朝九晚五双周休日是工人争取回来的，若加班就是开倒车。现在应该注重在个体单位生产效率的提升。

袁腾飞聊966

What your boss see

It is what your boss have seen you doing that matters. So make sure your boss can access what you have done i.e. a playable version of your game.

Game-based Immersive Learning: Engaging Learning through Tactical, Strategic and Narrative Immersion

When I reflected on Prof Emeritus Dato' Dr Aminah Ayob's talk on Monday (1 April), the following tagline pop-up in my mine:

Game-based Immersive Learning: Engaging Learning through Tactical, Strategic and Narrative Immersion

I remembered in 2009, I wrote an article that gave me a stance in the field of GBL in Europe--GBL with a Dialogic Teaching Approach: Deep Learning and the Use of Spore in A-Level Biology Lessons. I proposed the practice of "GBL with a dialogic teaching approach". 

Now, I would regard this approach as an instance of game-based strategic immersion.




When I was invited by UNIMAS as a discussion panel, a Sarawakian teacher asked the panel to explain why her students did not actually perform well even though they were highly motivated in a gamified lesson. I related her scenario to two psychological effects: the Hawthorne effect and the Dunning-Kruger effect. 

Hawthorne effect (aka the observer effect) a type of reactivity in which learners modify an aspect of their behavior in response to their awareness of being observed. 

3. Don Norman's three levels of emotional design

4. George A. Merill's Magical Number Seven plus minus two

Slash Career that involve gamification

A school teacher who writes textbook approached me through WhatsApp, asking me about the career prospect in the field of gamification.

To explain, I created the spectrum between GBL and gamification in education. 

Those who said that they practice gamification, they should have aligned at least one component of learning to one component of gamification. As explained in my book, herewith six structural elements of a game:

1) game goal

2) game rules

3) game challenge

4) game interaction

5) game feedback

6) game narrative 

7) game space  

However, if a completed game was used instead of specific game elements, then it is no longer a form gamification. Instead, such use of game in education is called "game-based learning" or GBL. However, there are two prongs of GBL, one is teaching and learning (T&L) through game playing; while another is T&S through making game. In this sense, gamification can be seen as a form of learning through game making. 

Gamification was originally used in marketing commercial products. But now the idea and practice of gamification have been spread to other fields, including education, healthcare, military and business.

To me, the opportunity afforded by the gamification trend now is actually motivating young generation to venture into the game industry (not the field of gamification). Thus, the career prospect in the game industry now can be used in working on gamification tasks, including game designers, programmers, game graphic artists, game testers, etc. 

For teachers who are interested to make the T&L in the classroom game-like, they may:

1) gamify the T&L themselves by aligning learning standards with game components

2) hire game designers and other experts in the game industry to produce serious game for their T&L practice

3) cooperate with game designers and other experts to practice gamification together. 

Whatever the case, both parties should professionally communicate to each other to avoid misunderstanding, particularly in matters related to content knowledge and pedagogy.

Nowadays, career in the 21st century is rather uncertain. For example, the rise of gamification was not planned in the education blueprint that was set a few years ago. Thus we should educate our students to think flexible, i.e. not only venturing into existing career in the job market, but also be ready for new and emerging fields, or be creative in creating new career path for themselves. 

One recent phenomena is the emergence of slash lifestyle, in which we no longer focus on one job in our life. Like me, apart from being an associate professor in UPSI, I am also: 2017/2018 Humphrey Fellow | Game-based Learning Specialist | Educationalist | Columnist | IJGBL Assoc Editor, as shown in my LinkedIn Profile.  

In this sense, teacher is no longer limited to teaching in school alone. A teacher who are well-verse in using games in teaching and like to write books can be: Teacher | Game-based Learning Specialist | Author. 

Reading notes on “Assessment in Game-based Learning: Foundations, Innovations, and Perspectives”

Pre-reading questions:

1.       Apart from criterion-referenced, norm-referenced and ipsative assessment which are associated to objectivism, subjectivism, emotivism and relativism, what other assessment methods or approaches can be applied in GBL?

Favorable learning environment:

-          Learner-centered

-          Knowledge-centered

-          Assessment-centered

Key question to be addressed by authors in this book:

-          how do we know if students have learned in games? (cognitive, affective and psychomotor changes)

-          What do we assess? (pre-playing preparation, in-game performance, off-game reflection, four levels of evaluation)

-          How do we assess students’ learning outcomes in a GBL environment? (3 methods)

Three parts of the book:

Part 1: Foundations of GBA

-          Chapter 2: Three frameworks for assessing learning from, with, and in games

-          Chapter 3: Formative assessment – role, theory, construct generation & refinement, test item development

-          Chapter 4: how to embed assessments within games to provide a way to monitor player’s current level on valued competencies, in order to provide learning support

-          Chapter 5: Three things game designers need to know about assessment

Part 2: Technological and methodological innovations for assessing GBL

-          Chapter 6: Patterns of game playing behavior as indicators of mastery

-          Chapter 7: How to build an automated assessment prototype within an open-ended 3D environment

-          Chapter 8: Information-trails approach

-          Chapter 9: Timed report tool  

-          Chapter 10: computer-adaptive testing and hidden Markov modeling – assessing learning dialog

-          Chapter 11: TPACK-PCARD framework and methodology

-          Chapter 12: MAPLET

-          Chapter 13: assessment technologies in educational games for young students

Part 3: Realizing assessment in GBL

-          Chapter 14: interactivity design and assessment framework for educational games to promote motivation and complex problem-solving skills

-          Chapter 15: Measurement principles

-          Chapter 16: how to use institutional data to evaluate game-based instructional designs

-          Chapter 17: incongruous use of 2D media-avatar drawings and 3D media-math-based digital gameplay

-          Chapter 18: Trends in assessing learner motivation

-          Chapter 19: Trends in assessing emotion

-          Chapter 20: Design model for obtaining diverse learning outcomes

-          Chapter 21: Preparing computer games for future learning

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Chapter 2: Three frameworks for assessing learning from, with, and in games

(Copyright of the original publisher)

The decisions involved in integrating educational games in education as they lead and inform assessment

Reaction: There is no actual “frameworks” presented in the paper. Perhaps, the best we can learn from this chapter is how three different games (Brainage, Spore & World of Warcraft) of three different genres (puzzle, simulation game & MMORPG) can be used to assess learning. Nonetheless, the figure included in the chapter can help educators (not game designers though) to think about issues and aspects related to assessment in GBL.

Chapter 3: Formative assessment – role, theory, construct generation & refinement, test item development

Role of formative assessment: to provide

-          information directly to students to inform them of the adequacy of their learning and performance

-          direction for improvement (Wiliam & Black, 1996)

Two types of evidence that can be collected during formative assessment (Wiliam & Black, 1996):

-          Purposive = evidence collected through deliberate provision of assessments to students

-          Incidental = evidence that is spontaneously and continuously generated

Two ways of formative assessment administration:

-          Through a teacher [employs debriefing sessions (Delacrus, 2010)]

o   Students respond to questions orally or in writing; teacher gives feedback accordingly

o   Teacher uses rubrics to guide assessment in debriefing sessions

o   Teacher provides rubrics directly to students, allowing students to self-assess or assess the performance of peers.

o   If scoring rules for the games are tied to learning goals, then tying the rubric to scoring rules can make assessment transparent (Delacruz, 2010)  

-          Embedded within a game

Theory underlying formative assessment:

How to generate construct

How to refine construct after generation

How to develop test items