Present Final Project

This week we presented our game to our year and we also got a chance to view the games of all the other groups games.

We showed our game to many members in our year, overall we got really good feedback from everyone and everyone really enjoyed playing and testing out our game, it was nice to see everyone interacting with our game.

One of the games I looked at was made by Robert Byrne, called monster flip. This game consists if three levels, each consists of a picture which has been jumbled up, the aim of the game is to put squares back in the right position, in order to complete the picture. Each picture is a different fun and cute monsters, which a child would really enjoy to see. Rob also told us that he chose the colours of each picture strategically, he looked into the psychology of colours and the ones he chose are one that have been proven to help keep autistic children calm. I thought that was a lovely touch. H made it in Unity.

Next, I saw Chloe and Rebecca's project. They created a multimedia magazine, in Indesign. I really liked it and thought it was very creative. It looked aesthetically very well and all of the light pastel colours complemented each other and made it easy to look at. They also added audio and video to different parts which made it nice rather than just reading the whole time.

Another game I got a chance to see was Dani's, it was very impressive with the visuals and how elaborate it was. It was from a third person perspective with one character as the main character in the game, the player could run around the world that he created on jump up on objects. The player also has a weapon with her, which she as kill her enemies with, these are giant bug like creatures. This was a very impressive game.

Overall it was a very productive game and productive for everyone.

Final Draft

Brain. Web source; Pixabay

Introduction

E-learning is a method of learning which is done through digital resources, it is electronic learning. E-learning is provided through any electronic device such as mobile phones, tablets and computers. This allows learning to be assessable to users at anytime. E-learning is a huge industry within learning today, due to many factors such as accessibility, accountability, cost effectiveness, convenience and relevancy. Cognitive learning can be described as learning through experience. The knowledge you acquire through reading is also part of cognitive learning. The following review of literature combines the two, taking about how e-leaning can enhance cognitive learning and the positive and negative aspects to it.

Discussion

Cognitive study and how it is a process in learning. New cognitive structures keep forming to improve cognitive structure and is benefit to understand concepts, this is done through assimilation and adaptation mechanism. This aims to help e-learners study concept knowledge better through cognition, this is shown through Linked Open Data-driven contrastive cognitive subgraph searching system. This system compares with existing search engines which compares with the concept that the learner already knows. This system is only the start of looking in e-learning service methods, which will then aid e-learners in understating concept more profoundly. This system has not yet been applied. Prototype needs to be interrogated next into Road Sciences and Technology Knowledge Service System. So that it will aid the help of learners to achieve better cognitive efficiency of related knowledge concepts. This can only been improved with the knowledge of the learners and their feedback.

To achieve this there needs to be more studies done to collect more data and emphasis is being placed on students acquiring meta-skills and knowledge, shaping relevant, negotiated curricula, being involved in collaborative, lifelong, global learning with the help of real-life tutors and informants, a social constructivist approach presents itself as the natural pedagogical paradigm, in third Millennium thinking. Caution must be taken with regard to social, conceptual, political and pedagogical dilemmas, as time can be an issue. If high levels of fluency and accuracy are to be achieved in language learning, cognitive constructivist activities are something that may be up for discussion. A study was done in two schools, with the two schools in interest complementing each other, despite being quite different, if care is taken to humanise and personalise automated activities, the best that is possible with current technological limitations. Doing this would explore in depth both static and dynamic technologies. Learners would be exposed to automated activities of a sophisticated class which would engage them in autonomous, predominantly cognitive and metacognitive processes, this would aid them in process-oriented real-life activities fostering psycho-social processes. The aim on this testing is to lead to a redistribution of scarce tutor time and better linguistic accuracy.

When looking into this topic of e-learning it is important to investigate into both individual and social constructivist view. Both individual and collective knowledge construction are equally important, as is understanding. Some learning based community environments mainly focus in on knowledge building and their goal is to achieve a higher corporate understanding.  Without a person having a full understanding in the community, an individual identity is not formed but only a collective identify within the community. Learning cannot be achieved if it is just at a social level, as it must happen in the learners head. In a community where each individual counts, each individual must go through their own personal learning, this creates diversity and everyones perspectives are valued. This gives way for people to depend on others individuality and knowledge. Within a community like this, there is room for negotiation and compromise. The goals of these communities are to achieve learning knowledge and learning how to learn, the goals are made very clear.

In order to make this possible for each individual, multimedia should be designed in specific ways that reduces any cognitive loads that is unnecessary. This is a huge challenge for instructional designers as to achieve meaning-full learning, it often comes along  with a huge amount of essential cognitive processing. There are different ways to make this change of cognitive work, work load, with each load-reduction method keyed to an overload scenario. This research program has been running for the last 12 years, which has been conducted at UCSB. In order for this program to succeed they must depend on the understanding of how the human brain actually works, to show that effective instructional design depends on a persons sensitivity to cognitive load. Twelve years worth of hard work and programmatic research that has been conducted at UCSB , is shown throughout this article, with hopes to contribute to cognitive theory and building on an empirical database.

E-learning can also, be achieved through motivational cognitive and social affordances of e-learning environment of gamification. After reviewing empirical studies in e-learning environment, it has been found that depending on what wants to be achieved that different game elements can be used for different cognitive and social motivational affordances. Although storylines are helpful as they can engage the student in their learning tasks,  they can result in students attitudes towards learning activities due to the limited integration. Another way to encourage and to cognitively motivate learners is to reward them with badges as the virtual agents will help to achieve attention and participation of the students. With this being said, it is unhelpful to rank students for higher scores on leaderboards. Gamification can be very rewarding for students as it creates social learning for individuals. “Gamification should incorporate mechanisms to improve cognitive and social motivations that enhance the course. Future work should develop a framework for gamified online courses that to improve cognitive engagement and social interaction for learners”.

Although, there have been a huge number of reports regarding the beneficial effects that online programmes have on learners which interact with online programmes. It has been argued through many online discussions whether to not there should be promotions for student-centred learning. It is reasonable to suggest that the benefits of online discussion should translate into improved student performance. The study that is currently under examination is on 122 undergraduates and their frequency of online interaction, this is compared with their grades at the end of the year. The results showed that the greater online interactions did not show any significantly higher performance for students achieving passing grades. However it did show that within the students that failed their courses, had very little online interaction.

Conclusion 

E-learning and cognitive learning can be brought together in many different ways, within schools and work places to help benefit the user and to improve academic performance. E-learning is important for each individual to achieve their potential within cognitive learning.

References:

2018 IEEE 15th International Conference on e-Business Engineering (ICEBE) ICEBE e-Business Engineering (ICEBE), 2018 IEEE 15th International Conference on. :263-268 Oct, 2018

Richard E. Mayer & Roxana Moreno (2003) Nine Ways to Reduce Cognitive Load in Multimedia Learning, Educational Psychologist, 38:1, 43-52, DOI: 10.1207/ S15326985EP3801_6

Hung, David, and Maish Nichani. "Constructivism and E-Learning: Balancing Between the Individual and Social Levels of Cognition." Educational Technology 41, no. 2 (2001): 40-44. 

FELIX, U. (2005). E-learning pedagogy in the third millennium: The need for combining social and cognitive constructivist approaches. ReCALL, 17(1), 85-100. doi:10.1017/S0958344005000716

2016 IEEE 16th International Conference on Advanced Learning Technologies (ICALT) Advanced Learning Technologies (ICALT), 2014 IEEE 14th International Conference on Advanced Learning Technologies (ICALT), 2016 IEEE 16th International Conference on. :373-375 Jul, 2016; IEEE Language: English, Database: IEEE Xplore Digital Library

Jo Davis  Martin Graff

Published: 25 July 2005 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8535.2005.00542.

Peter Murphy, July 13, 2016, 5 Ways Technology Impacts Learning Today

https://elearningindustry.com/5-ways-technology-impacts-learning-today

Beta

This was a successful week for my group. We worked together to create the aesthetics of the game in Animate. We have all the different elements of our game complete its just about bringing them all together. All the levels are laid out and it is just a matter of finalising the code for the game.

We presented what we have so far to our year and Shaun this week, we were all pretty happy with how it went and we got some very positive feedback from our other classmates.

Over the coming two weeks we plan to come together to complete the game fully, I know Esmee was having some difficulty with creating a drag and drop feature in the game so that is something we will have to try resolve.

Our game will  be complete when we return to college and I look forward to the final product and showing it to our class mates.

Tiny Farm

MD2Week11

This week we all focused on the design of the game, we all took a different level and designed it in illustrator, my level was one that focused on adding and subtracting. The player has to add and subtract different animals together. We exported these fines as svg as they would then be used as a template for the game in animate.

Level 4 of our game

Our meeting with Shaun went well this week and we hope to have a playable for Thursday.

I also had to make some more recordings this week as some of the dialogue was changed. I  then edited the audio and cut them up into individual files as I recorded them as one long file.

Editing the audio

Week 10

This week was important for us to start bringing things together for our project. My job was to collect all audio for the game. As this is a game that is aimed for age four to eight year olds, we are aware that they will not all be able to read yet, so they will be unable to read the instructions, therefore will really struggle with the game play.

To help this problem we have decided to create audio for the instructions also, I worked alongside Marcin this week, as he was in charge of the dialogue for the game. After his research he constructed dialogue for our game Tiny Farm, he then sent this script to be and I recorded it.

Script for Tiny Farm

I used a H1 Zoom to record the audio for our game. I used a mans voice for the recordings so they would fit in the the famers voice. I got him to use an encouraging voice to help encourage the children through the game, even when they fail to complete the level.

These will be put into the game at a later stage.

H1 Zoom recorder

Recordings

MD2Final GDD

This week we made some progress on the development of our game. What I done this week was source audio that we could find throughout the game. I got the audio from a few different websites;

https://www.zapsplat.com/sound-effect-category/animals/

https://www.freesoundeffects.com/free-sounds/pigs-10067/

http://soundbible.com/1662-Farm.html

I got an animal noise for each animal that has been created for our game, so when the animal is clicked on the appropriate noise will be played.

I also found a fam ambiance which will be played when you are on the home screen to set the atmosphere and give the player a feel for the game.

Some of the audio files so far.

I have also been looking into background music for the game, and have yet to find something appropriate so I will finalise that this week. 

I will be meeting with the team again this week, Marcin is writing some text to help players in the game and we plan on recording these messages, as the players of our games will be very young and some may be unable to read. This will help these players. These will be recorded this week.

Game Design Document

Cartoon Farm Animals

I have teamed up with Esmee MacPherson, Nicole Goodman, Emma Byrne, Nhi Thai, Robyn Mulhall and Marcin Grabicki for this project. We plan on making an E-learing game aimed at four to eight year olds. Our original plan was to create a game with multiple different subjects to choose from. However after some research we realised that we have to be more realistic with the time that we have, and we have decided to make a maths based game.

We decide that we want the theme of our game to be based on a farm, as it will look colourful and appealing to kids as they will have learned about all different animals. Some of the games will include such things as counting shapes or matching up animals.

We have decided that we want to make this game as an app for an iPad because that is the most common device within children these days.

This week we all made the Game Design Document for our game, we each took a section and researched it and wrote about that in the document.

My section was sound and audio fx, so I looked into different sound effects that would help make the game more enjoyable for the child playing, we will have different animal noises corresponding with the animal. There will also be light and cheerful background music in the game.

Two games that we were inspired by for our game are Animal Crossing and Leap Frog.

GDD