e-Learning Ecologies MOOC’s Updates
Mobile Game Learning
We are past-mid-2020, and a huge number of schools around the globe took their traditional classroom sessions into the digital world, something most of them dreamed of doing, but were suddenly pushed off the airplane while still considering if they knew how to operate the parachute. For good or bad, this is a big step towards ubiquitous learning, even if schools are slowly trying to bring children back to the classroom.
Statistics I came across support my perception as a father, uncle, and as part as friends’ journey with their children through the school challenges during Covid-19 pandemics, and they say that, even using good digital platform, a great number of students perceive it as a downgrade, and most parents as well.
https://en.unesco.org/news/global-education-monitoring-gem-report-2020
http://www.guide2research.com/research/online-education-statistics
https://www.un.org/development/desa/dspd/wp-content/uploads/sites/22/2020/08/sg_policy_brief_covid-19_and_education_august_2020.pdf
Taking into account factors like access to technology and good internet, pertinent household discipline during confinement, or parents and tutors’ time to follow the children up while doing home office, virtual schooling has presented as many problems as it has solved them. It is true connectivity is much higher and both parents and teachers can have a clear view of students’ progress in real time, but on the other hand, students lost their established school-ground social interactions, now fully immersed in social media, which they heavily perceive as a source of entertainment and fun, and not obligations and “boring stuff like math or sciences”.
Using entertainment to teach is not news anymore, but games prompt actions and ideas that videos and texts do not, and being with teenagers doing digital schoolwork during confinement showed me that they search for games about the new subject they have to learn, they install a few, then go back to the school portal, because the games do not fulfill their needs. The current idea is that “games that look like they only exist to teach are boring,” meaning they want the fun first, or that the game challenges are related to the fun part of the game, and not the learning part.
Therefore, mobile games that apply the real-world use of the subjects in fun ways, and sneak in the “learning part” have a lot of room in this new world. Student’s behavior can be constantly monitored, not only through navigation and answers to tests, but also the way they move characters around, interact to each other, and have special degrees of freedom in a virtual space that brings them back into a place they can see each other (or their avatar), visit different places of the school, and attend “virtual classrooms” that take them to different worlds where they will use and hone their skills. That is not there yet!
When we faced the challenge brought by the Covid-19, the study platform of studnets shifts from real classroom to the virtual school in China. I remembered clearly that my little cousin who was in grade 8, studied new lesson through TV during the special period. He just laid in Sofa and did not do any note when he was at the 'class'. His parents were at work outside and grandma could not do anything to supervise his study.
However, the Chinese News reported that in the Beijing area, some students performed better in the High School Entrance Exam after they studied at home for half a year.
That's an interesting phenonmenon that stimulates my interest. I think the biggest difference between the two kinds of outcome of 'virtual school' is the learning antonomy of student. Students who are highly disciplined are more likely to get benefits from 'home learing', as this kind of education give them more freedom to improve their learning efficiency. In a traditioanl Chinese Secondary School we have to spend more than 9 hours at school to have lessons, and we have to finish homework when we get back until late. Too much pressure in study sometimes can have less effect.
@Mingjun Tang,