Abstract:
Closed campuses, working remotely, and physical distancing have changed the way we work, teach, learn, shop, attend conferences, and interact with family and friends. But the Covid-19 pandemic has not changed what we know about creating high-end online education. Two decades of research has shown that online education often fails to fulfill its promise, and the emergency shift to remote instruction has, for many, justified their distrust and dislike of online learning. Low interactivity remains a widely recognized short-coming of current online offerings. Low interactivity results, in part, from many faculty not feeling comfortable being themselves online. The long-advocated for era of authentic assessments is needed now more than ever. Finally, greater support is needed for both underrepresented students and for faculty to move beyond basic online instruction to create a strong continuum of care between the teaching and learning environment and the student support infrastructure. For those who have been long-term champions of online education, it has never been more important to confront the three biggest challenges that continue to haunt online education – interactivity, authenticity, and support. Only by confronting these challenges squarely can instructors, educational developers, and their institutions take huge steps towards better online instruction in the midst of a pandemic and make widespread, high-quality online education permanently part of the “new normal.”
Abstract:
The relationships between fun and learning are far from clear. Some argue that the two are mutually
exclusive, while playful practitioners draw attention to links with motivation, exploration and creativity. This is
an important issue in the context of games-based learning – should fun be emphasised, or should it be set
aside in favour of other elements? In order to explore the relationships between learning and fun, it is first
necessary to understand the meanings of ‘fun’, a term that previous studies have shown is interpreted in
several distinct ways. In this paper, we explore a new approach to researching fun and learning, the Consensus
Workshop. This method was used to address two research questions: ‘What elements of fun do a group of
educational practitioners identify within a Consensus Workshop?’ and ‘How do participants see these
elements translating to a learning scenario?’ It was also used to explore whether a Consensus Workshop can
be used to collaboratively create a taxonomy of fun, and to identify any practical and conceptual barriers to
this being done effectively. Participants in a Consensus Workshop used balloons to help them construct two
typologies of fun and its relationship to learning. We evaluate this approach and its outcomes, identify
elements of a future typology, examine how understandings of fun are shaped by context, and consider the
ways in which participants linked fun and learning. The study highlights the importance of context to
understandings of fun, and also finds indications that studies in this area are limited by a tendency to focus on
socially acceptable views of fun and its relationship to learning. It finds that a Consensus Workshop has the
potential to be used to create a taxonomy of fun. In this initial trial of the method, educational practitioners identified multiple elements of fun and made a range of connections between fun and learning.