There is no end to on-line education materials available to the curious learner and opportunistic educator. In a previous post, I argued that quality web-based instructional materials need to meet basic standards in order for products to succeed. In this piece I explore and recommend ways to take your products from good to great, using the capacity of the Internet to inspire, engage, and educate today’s youth while meeting the needs of all education stakeholders.
To move your product from good to great, the development needs to include thought provoking interactivity, appropriate user feedback, follow through, and quality user interface, audio, and imaging. Of the many products I reviewed for clients, during the competitive analysis phase of development, few of even the best products these features. Companies have yet to combine all these and more to create an outstanding instructional products.
Inquiry and Interactivity
Several of the best examples of thought provoking interactivity available to K-12 STEM educators include Gizmos by ExploreLearning, Discovery Education Science virtual labs, and the Riverdeep product, BBC Science Simulations. All of these products are powerful interactive simulations that engage students in an inquiry approach to learning. The simulations provide students with the capacity to manipulate variables and capture results. Some products even provide opportunities to follow up the inquiry with feedback and assessment. Like all instructional products, developmentally and age appropriate concepts and contexts must be employed to ensure learning. This is where having a K-12 expertise on your team, from conception through completion, will greatly aid in the success of your product and acceptance by the K-12 STEM education community.
Age Appropriate Contexts
Age appropriate characters and topics help capture student attention. The use of animation to create stories and relate content helps capture student interest and attention. BrainPOP Junior does a nice job of relating content and concepts to students using characters that they can relate to. One weakness of the product is that it relies on passive learning rather than interactivity. This makes BrainPOP useful for reinforcing topics or activities addressed by a primary curriculum program and teacher instruction. Aha!Science, created by Learning.com, takes animated storylines a step further incorporating games, simulations, and assessments other opportunities to compel student interaction. I am partial to this product having worked with the team early on to align the product to state and national standards, create a scope and sequence, and map out individual instructional items for grades K-5.
Valuable Feedback
One very useful and challenging feature to incorporate into web-based instruction is engaging and appropriate user feedback. Several online products respond to students with simple feedback such as, “Correct answer. Great job!” or “Sorry, try again”. While most products include encouraging feedback few really engage students in thought about their responses. These statements lack the opportunity for students to explore or expand their understanding whether they correctly or incorrectly answered the question. A response to a correct answer might better serve the student by restating the answer in an affirmative and then offering an opportunity to explore beyond the content of the existing lesson. For example, “Correct. Diamond is the hardest substance on the Mohs scale of mineral hardness. To learn more about this scale, click this link.” Incorrect answers should encourage students to return to the problem and supply them with more information required to make a correct response. For example, “Your answer, topaz, is the 8th hardest mineral on Mohs scale of hardness. Click the hint button to review the hardness scale.”
Research being conducted by Boulder Language Technologies, and others, should help move forward the ability for students to receive more advanced prompts and engage in more valuable feedback with the computer-based products. Hopefully advances in technology and computer activity will provide future generations with opportunities for simulating feedback that better mimics responses and interactions students would encounter when working with peers or teachers.
Follow Through
Few products engage users in higher order thing skills and fewer still require that the user follow through to completion on a particular concept or train of thought. For your product to outstrip the competition, design opportunities that allow students to extend and enhance their learning, following their own interests to conclusion. One of my clients, Creative Learning Systems, makes use of the Internet, encouraging students to explore beyond the concepts and content at the core of the lesson. CLS lessons not only recommend that students leave the lesson, but encourage students to perform their own research and report findings to their peers and teachers. More products should follow this model harnessing the Internet to inspire and educate self-paced and self-directed learning.
Quality Interface Experiences
The quality of the interface, audio, and images cannot be understated. Today’s youth expect high quality audio and image. Moreover, the user interface should take into account the age and developmental level of the audience. Developers should observe students use and interact with their products as part of the design process. A female friend, expecting twins, once explained to me that she bought a specific brand and model SUV because it was the only vehicle she felt she could enter and drive, safely. Other models were too tall to enter or once in, she could not reach the brake and gas pedals. Likewise, young children encounter challenges when interacting with computer-based games and activities. If you observe first-time computer users, you will notice that using a mouse and following the cursor on screen present numerous challenges.
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