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questions posted,” she observed, which is one of the the curriculum content and learning. “I had never thought
main impetus behind her push for such an improved Q&A about gameplay,” Michelle remarked, “I only thought of
platform. In order to determine if questions and answers imparting the knowledge and letting students do some
are indeed better, a key feature in the system is the ability hands-on activities.” Working with vendors provided her
to measure the thoughtfulness of questions and answers with a different perspective to learning and led her to
posted using text mining techniques. realise the importance of good learning tool design such
as how games with instant gratification are typically more
Bringing a different perspective engaging, and hence more effective in making the
In her journey to develop these innovative teaching tools, students’ learning process enjoyable and effective.
Michelle also learnt much from the vendors who were Student-centric efforts
engaged to develop them. In their first meeting to discuss
the tool, the vendor asked her, “How do you want the Most, if not all, of Michelle’s projects are motivated by her
students to play the game?” This question caught her by desire to improve her students’ learning. Despite being
surprise because she had hitherto focused primarily on comfortable teaching without additional innovative
pedagogical tools, she knew that more could (and should)
be done. “Technical topics tend to be dry and boring for
them,” she said. Indeed, as Michelle observed, the ILOAT
seemed to benefit students, especially those diligent ones.
“Students want to learn,” she explained, “so they will
definitely benefit more from these tools because they can
use the tool repeatedly to explore the contents,
calculations and decision-making over and over
again.” After implementing the online learning tools,
Michelle found that students were able to ask deeper
questions in class, which showed that the students were
indeed thinking more critically about the content, the case
scenario and also the technical computations.
