Wednesday 23 March 2016

Gamifying a Science Topic

I have just completed teaching Breathing, Respiration, Blood and Disease, and have created a GSite to accompany my lessons. I want my students to be able to independently access the resources they need to complete their eBooks and other tasks in and out of lessons.
Each page has the spec points, learning objectives, needed resources, YouTube clips/EdPuzzle/Versal/etc, GForm Quiz, Quizlet, GDrive folder of resources, past paper questions, GDrawing with links to BBC, ABPI, Memrise and DoddleLearn.



Each Google Form Quiz is graded with Fubaroo and set to autograde, or with the new Google Quiz functionality. Another sheet is used to import the data generated by Flubaroo into a Master sheet (template attached below) of all the quizzes in the topic. From here I use a combination of filters, joins, queries and vlookups to gather the students' scores together so that I can plot graphs of their performances and award them badges for reaching 80% and 100% in their sub-topics.



In the image above, I have achieved 100% in all 14 quizzes, gaining me gold badges (made from nounproject.org) in each of the four sub-topics. By achieving 100% in all quizzes, I have unlocked the Vampire Quest easter-egg level that is only available to those that max out all of the quizzes. I don't make that difficult as I have set Flubaroo to send the correct answers to the students after their first attempt (some students try to game the game but I keep an eye on them!)

The Vampire Quest is on a permissions based page that the students must request access to. I check that they are worthy and grant them access to a page which has instructions, 3 UnLife Lines and the first of 14 or 15 puzzles. I have included content from history, maths, biology, chemistry, art, PE, and an array of searching skills and app use including QR codes, YouTube, Google Street View, GForms, etc. that are aimed at busting the mythology of vampires. (a folder of resources is linked below)


I have based some of the puzzles on BreakoutEdu.com and have utilised 2 x 5 letter word locks, a directional lock, a dial combination lock, and 2 UV torches. The quest finishes with one last form being submitted that triggers Autocrat to create a certificate with the position the student has completed the quest in. Unlike BreakOutEdu, I have left the clues and puzzles all over the school, so this is more like a virtual and real space quest / amazing race!

The interesting part of the whole site is how the students interact with it. Some are extrinsically motivated by the graphs and want to see a complete set, while some are compelled to gather the gold badges. I have not set any of the quizzes as homework because I am interested to see if the students will complete them by themselves, and whether they will do the Vampire Quest of their own volition. All I have done is have my page open at the start of lessons with all the graphs at 100%, the badges all gold, and the Vampire button visible, in order to let them see what a complete set looks like and that I have it and they don't. The completion of the quizzes by the students and their returning to the quiz to get 100% tells me about the student: are they independent and resilient in their learning? Do they want to improve themselves and have a growth mindset? Useful information particularly at parents' evening where I show the parent my teacher GSheet dashboard with all of their child's performances in all of my assessments including this!

Click here for the images etc used for the clues
Some of the clues are specific to my school and students but the idea of an open quest is what I was trying to achieve and be able to replicate as a framework.

Click here for GSheet Master Template with Vampire Quest Forms attached + sheets with the imported Flubaroo quizzes. The sheet has all of the necessary formulae and functions built in.

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