What can we learn from goal-focused activity in games to help us design engaging learning activities? Deterding (2011) explains that games tend to be designed with a well structured flow of goals.
The overall goal of the game is chunked into smaller goals. The goals become increasingly more difficult and there is often fluctuation in challenges so that once a user masters a challenge; the level of difficultly is kept to the same level for a time so that users get an opportunity to experience mastery of a goal.
Games tend to vary the challenges and require users to combine skills from different challenges in order to master new challenges. Deterding (2011) also recommends having goals that are personal to the user or at least have some level of customisation.
You can set up a feedback activity at the start of a module for students to articulate their goals for the module. This allows students to articulate their personal goals. Provide opportunities for students to review progress against their goals at key points during the module.
You can use Interactive with multiple tries setting in Quiz to provide students with an opportunity to submit an answer to each question as they go along to get immediate feedback, and if they do not get it right immediately, have another try for fewer marks.
The H5P activity in Moodle enables you to create new interactive content for your modules. These include:
You can create engaging and interactive learning resources with H5P, as well as monitoring students' engagement using your activities and follow up with them accordingly.
H5P activities work well on mobiles as well as desktops so students can interact with them at a time, pace and place that suits their requirements.
It takes time to create effective H5P activities so this isn't a quick resource to complete, but H5P is an exciting addition to our suite of tools to support more flexible teaching and learning approaches.
Consider how the activities that your students are engaging in contribute to an overall goal and what kind of assessment might fit in.
Restrict access settings enables the lecturer to restrict access to activities or resources based on students viewing, participating in or getting a certain grade on a particular activity. This setting enables lecturers to scaffold challenges for students.
You can support the development of group goals through the use of groups on a range of activities by using groups in your module.
Use Moodle reports to identify if you have set the right challenges. How long did students spend on the activities? How did students perform on these activities? Reports helps you understand what students have been doing on Moodle.
