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Use principles from video games in non-entertainment ways to make activities more motivating and engaging. Popular in the health and fitness world. You have an activity that you want your users to do more often and you have leaderboards for sense of competition and something to recognise achievement currently three missing ingredients. 1. Need to create meaning. Need to get benefit. Stack overflow valuable to user, foursquare no benefit but only achievements so people leave. Try to offer the user to bring their personal goals to the platform - mint.com or at least have customisable goals. At very least has to connect to interest or curiosity of user. Ensure you are connecting to a meaningful community of interest. Need to have bragging rights with your friends. Focused community boardgamegeek.com. So perhaps you can have community-generated goals. Video games have an overarching narrative and all your micro-goals feed into an overall goal. Missile command. only you can defend your city from nuclear bombs. Crowd sourcing to present political transperancy. Narratively frame this as discover corruption in your area, it becomes meaningful to you. You need to have supporting visuals and copy that cue you into the fictional world around you. The visual carries the story. with meaning there is a danger involved - aloha tries to encourage random acts of kindness. Degrading for the person you treat to act of kindness as they realise you are only doing it for points. Test your environment with non-geeky friends to make sure it doesn't seem awkward. Beware of social context meanings. 2. How to craft an experience so user can gain mastery Achievement is like a skinner box in games world. Progress wars - hit button to gain points, but is not motivating and engaging. fun is just another word for learning Koster, 2005. Fun in learning is the fun of mastering something, the act of solving puzzles and understanding something. why is school (solving maths) not fun and games invol

"Garrison and Vaughan (2008) describe best practices for blended learning implementation in higher education. They underscore the need for a seamless connection between the face-to-face and online components in order to ensure a truly blended learning environment. Moreover, they advocate the superimposition of various other pedagogies, as appropriate - lecture, problem-based learning, just-in-time teaching, cooperative learning, and others - on the blended framework."

" Participation in a hybrid course can be a tricky thing. If you plan on using participation as a portion of the students' grade, make sure you are clear as to what participation entails and for which part of the course, online or face to face. When students meet during class time, it's a great opportunity for group work, debate, case studies, or other active learning strategies. Time is precious and we never seem to have enough without reinventing the wheel each semester. Therefore, try using existing resources as a starting place for course content rather than creating all new online content yourself. You can always create your own content as needed. Take advantage of the training offered by your institution. You may have the opportunity to learn new skills or refresh existing ones like using the Joule Gradebook, Joule Reports, adding resources and activities. For more in-depth instruction on course "

Presentation by Allison LittleJohn. Slide 35 has a useful template for planning and sequencing a learning activity

Don't use more than 3 font styles per page - this includes colour and size. More than 3 fonts increases cognitive load for your students. Don't use course page to deliver your content. Use it as a launch page You should be able to see at least one topic without having to scroll. Don't be the one doing all the work - get students to design the practice quizzes. (Question creator role) Do let students participate and collaborate. Use forums, wikis Don't make users scroll side to side (centre banners makes it difficult to see outer blocks) Do make sure your content fits (on the course page irrespective of browser) Don't forget the value of the logs. (When a link is done from a label or assignment or HTML page you lose the logging capability you would get if you added it as a resource) Don't overdo the activity names - causes breadcrumb to wrap (use a label to provide the explanation) Do use labels to guide students Don't be afraid of white space (use indent and labels) Keep topic summary succint Don't force users to scroll and scroll (Avoid lots of images and content in topic 0_ Do use images Do simplify delivery (build it all in Moodle - lessons, book and pages) Don't be afraid to branch out (try something new!) Think about how you can use completion tracking effectively

* Practice Testing - Rather than recapping previous material, informally test students on it - Require students to actively participate in learning (cf. partnerships) * Distributed Practice - Better to get students to recall material over time rather than have a single revision session - Make revision an integral part of a course, throughout its delivery

online pyramid model for online activities

Useful tool for generating logos which might be useful with scenario and role play activities. However doesn't see to be free seems to cost $29 to download the logo

"The level of „ fidelity ‟ underpinning simulation is gover ned not only by the technology used, but predominantly by the way faculty staff actively participate, either as tutors, actors, or abstain from taking part in the simulated scenario."

Evaluation of student experience online and face-to-face. Student preference for face to face discussion activities.

Allow the learner to exert some control over his or her own learning - This is the principle of "autonomy", a part of the self-determination theory of motivation. Learners who believe that they are the ones making choices and exercising control over what is happening to them demonstrate a higher level of engagement, persistence, and responsibility for learning as well as beliefs in their own accountability for whether they learn or not. This can be done by allowing learners to choose among alternative assignments or timing of their work. It can also be doing by encouraging learners to articulate their reasoning behind their choices. And most important, it is enhanced when the instructor allows the learners to make and then solve their own mistakes before jumping in to solve the problems for them. These four ideas are not particularly brilliant; you probably had thought of one or more of them in your own practice. Starting with benchmarks for self-regulated learning and activities that are valued by students, supporting student feelings of self-efficacy and competence, tailoring instruction to the students' starting understanding and building from there, an"