Gamification is a powerful tool to motivate students to learn. One recent successful example is the CantoSounds project ¹ initiated by a team of Cantonese teachers from the School of Chinese. It is a versatile gamification platform for exchange students who often lament that Cantonese is a difficult language to learn. The CantoSounds team reached out a helping hand by providing self-learning online resources and gamifying the learning experience. The CantoSounds platform has been used in CHIN9511 Cantonese as a Foreign Language I and is now open for public access.

Creating a Versatile Gamification Platform for Self-learning

The CantoSounds platform now has over hundreds of videos and sound samples, as well as interactive learning materials, quizzes, and games, freely accessible online anytime. These materials are designed for self-practising pronunciation and romanisation outside class time, allowing teachers and students to focus on communicative language learning activities in class.

The system was rolled out in late January 2016. Through the system, students can watch videos demonstrating the explanatory of initials, finals and tones, click on images to listen to individual words, and do a simple quiz to test their understanding. All these actions give students game points. As they gain more points through progressive learning, they will be promoted to higher levels (from Newbie to Expert!). Learning is further gamified through providing different questions in every quiz quest, with instant feedback.

Creating an online gamification platform is not as difficult as one may think. The platform was built on WordPress with leveraging third-party plugins. For instance, CantoSounds used MyCred for the point system and WP-Pro Quiz for quizzes. A simple mini-game was embedded from the Quizlet flashcard platform. Less tech-savvy teachers can also update online content using WordPress’ ready-made editor backend.

Providing Extra Incentives via Gamifying the Learning Process

The team tested the platform with students in the course. In order to give extra incentives to students, 1% of the participation score of the course was allocated to the game platform. One mark will be assigned to students if they reach the highest rank (Expert, 1000 points) on the platform. Usually a mere 1% score cannot really motivate students, but the combination of course incentive plus gaming elements did a wonderful job in motivating students to hit the highest rank – Out of the 66 students who signed up, an amazing number of students (20) reached the Expert rank. This shows that students were attracted to use the system. With gamification, we can provide students with an engaging and “sticky” learning experience. This, we believe, is the power of gamification.

Gamification is a powerful tool to reshape students’ learning experience and maximize learning outcome. It is not only useful in facilitating language teaching, but can also be used in other courses. If you are looking for ways to motivate students to learn, gamification may be one way to try out.

References

• Barata, G., Gama, S., Jorge, J., & Gonçalves, D. (2013, October). Improving participation and learning with gamification. In Proceedings of the First International Conference on gameful design, research, and applications (pp. 10-17). ACM.
• Conquering the 4Cs: Creating Engaging In-class Activities
  https://tl.hku.hk/2016/03/conquering-the-4cs-creating-engaging-in-class-activities/
• DomíNguez, A., Saenz-De-Navarrete, J., De-Marcos, L., FernáNdez-Sanz, L., PagéS, C., & MartíNez-HerráIz, J. J. (2013). Gamifying learning experiences: Practical implications and outcomes. Computers & Education, 63, 380-392.
• Kapp, K. M. (2012). The gamification of learning and instruction: game-based methods and strategies for training and education. John Wiley & Sons.
• MOOC: Gamification https://www.coursera.org/learn/gamification

What does the future hold for vernacular architecture in Asia? In this concluding episode, we will try to look into this question and examine tradition, modernity, and cultural sustainability in the context of the Asian vernacular built environment. Register to take the course for free at http://tinyurl.com/architecturemooc and join learners from around the world on July 26, 2016. Find out more about it here!

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As the curriculum broadened in scope and depth, more and more teachers are interested in developing meaningful and effective ways of documenting, monitoring and evaluating student achievements through ePortfolios. That’s why Professor Gavin Brown (Faculty of Education and Social Work, University of Auckland) and Dr. Tanja Sobko (Faculty of Science, HKU) received a full-house attendance at their seminar “Assessing with ePortfolios” on July 8, 2016.

Professor Brown introduced ePortfolio as a ‘systematic, purposeful and chronological collection of student work’ which empowers students to continuously learn through critical thinking and reflection. There are several aspects to facilitate the use of ePortfolios.

• First, students need to understand the importance of reflection and self-monitored learning. A timely and continuous progress is the key – work must start early for students to curate and build the ePortfolio. Willingness to reveal different stages of work justifies improvements and connections to learning outcomes.
• Second, for teachers, having a well-designed rubric and cross-references will lead to good assessment. Alternatively, an ePortfolio can be developed as a non-assessed dialogue with students – but some incentives or motivation will be necessary.
• Third, be flexible about the platform for ePortfolio. Professor Brown believes that current market options have similar technology. It is not necessary to be too restrictive.

An example in HKU

In the second part of the seminar, Dr. Sobko shared her ePortfolio experience in a BSc Exercise and Health course with 30 students. She aimed to promote eHealth Literacy ¹ via the combined use of wearable device ‘Mi band’ and ePortfolio. Students wore the tracker device to record their daily activity levels (e.g., walking distance, hours of deep sleep) electronically, and wrote regular reflections during the process.

It was found that students became more aware of their personal health, and incorporated more scientific references in their reflection writing as the weeks passed. Key words to describe content quality of ePortfolio evolved from ‘interesting’, ‘personal’ at the beginning to ‘reflective’, ‘evidence-based’, ‘organized’ at the end of the course.

Dr. Sobko particularly saw the added value of the data collected in helping to ‘track, support and explore development of new literacies in eHealth literacy.’

TELI is now working closely with teachers on a few pilot projects to understand the features that they’d like to see in ePortfolios. If you’d like to collaborate, please get in touch via enquiry@teli.hku.hk.

Download the presentations here:
Prof Brown’s presentation
Dr. Sobko’s presentation

Summary of workshop details here.

If you are someone who is curious or cares about the everyday environment you live in, join this online course! Be part of the journey with us in Vernacular Architecture of Asia: Tradition, Modernity and Cultural Sustainability and explore how vernacular architecture can be sustained in this urbanized world. This 5-week course will start on 26 July 2016.

Highlights of the course

• Deepen your appreciation of the values and meanings of vernacular architecture in your local environments
• Establish your personal perspectives on the more complex issues in vernacular architecture, such as self-conscious or un-self-conscious way of building, informal settlements, and cultural sustainability
• Help you to generate your own ideas of how to protect and conserve your local vernacular built environment

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As vernacular architecture faces various threats, how do we make sure that the needs of both the current and future generations are met? In Week 4 of Vernacular Architecture of Asia, we focus on the conservation of the built vernacular heritage. Register to take the course for free at http://tinyurl.com/architecturemooc and join learners from around the world on July 26, 2016. Find out more about it here!

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Course Trailer