Articulation 6: playful learning

April 4, 2017 at 3:57 pm | Posted in projects | Leave a comment
Tags: playful learning, Storyline

I was keenly aware that this training on sustainable hairdressing was voluntary, and this provided several design imperatives:

1. It should be fairly quick to complete; I was aiming for around 40 minutes and our data showed that was actually the average time taken.
2. That placed constraints on the amount of content, especially text – and I also thought that ‘bite sized’ ideas would best suit our target audience.
3. It should be engaging and fun, with plenty of interactivity: exploring the virtual salon, liking ideas to increase your EcoPro score and answering quiz questions. I also included a few playful items, described below.
4. I really wanted learners to say that it was “interesting and quite fun” rather than “dull and boring” in any word-of-mouth (and social media) recommendations.

Quiz questions

Learners were presented with a single quiz question as they left each area to return to the virtual salon. These were not scored and were used as an opportunity to emphasise a key learning point. Storyline makes it easy to show layers providing a hint if the first attempt is incorrect and the correct answer if the second attempt is incorrect.

Graphic carbon savings calculator

Denise wanted learners to understand the scale of savings that could be made by some simple changes in hair-washing behaviour; for example do you really need to shampoo twice? I created a slide with six options that showed the carbon savings graphically by using a footprint shape whose area matched the ‘carbon footprint’ of various choices:

Again, a link to the calculations was provided for anyone who wished to view them.

Good try!

The start of the training includes guidance on how to Like ideas, see your EcoPro score and collect the Big Ideas, where it says “Click this icon if you see it on any page.” I thought some learners might try clicking the example icons and wanted to ensure that their initiative was acknowledged. Why ducklings? Because I thought any training that made you smile was off to a good start!

Easter Egg

It was about a year ago, just before Easter, when I visited Shine to take the panoramic photo used for the virtual salon. As a ‘thank you’ to the staff I bought them a chocolate egg, but first placed it on a shelf so it was included in the photo. Many apps include an ‘Easter egg’, a playful feature or message hidden by its programmers, and I thought it would be fun to use the real egg to access one of the ten areas in the salon. I wanted to reward the learners with a cute photo, and after debating the relative merits of kittens and puppies decided to use both! This area concluded with a research question whose feedback made the point that most customers do want salons to consider environmental issues. Remember that this training aimed to motivate hairdressers to change their behaviour by providing them with carefully selected information.

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Try it yourself!

We are no longer collecting data, and the training is now hosted on the University’s Edshare repository and can be accessed by anyone. Why not give it a try? Most learners took around 35-40 minutes to complete the training.

 

Click the image to access the training.