Internet Learning Volume 3, Number 2, Fall 2014 | Page 40

Internet Learning Volume 3 Number 2 - Fall 2014
Gamifying Course Content with SmashFact
Britt Carr
Introduction
The annual report, Grade Change:
Tracking Online Education in the
United States, 2013 (Allen & Seaman,
2014) revealed an important and surprising
trend: an increasing proportion of
educational leaders view online courses as
requiring greater discipline in order to be
successful than face-to-face learning. In fact,
more than 2/3 of those surveyed believe that
students who are taking courses online face
greater barriers. This poses a potential problem
for both learners and institutions. For
learners, this means the responsibility for
completion of a degree requires exceptional
intrinsic motivation and initiative in figuring
out the key concepts they need to master
in order to be successful. For institutions,
students who are not successful drop out,
and degree completion rates are a key metric
of success, and academic leaders identify the
issue of student retention for online courses
as a serious concern. Therefore, identifying
ways to enhance student success in an online
environment is not just a concern for
students themselves, it’s an important challenge
for all of higher education.
Those who take online courses require
greater self-discipline for reasons outside
of the learning environment, with many
students choosing this type of learning environment
because they are also juggling
things like full-time jobs and family obligations
while also trying to pursue a degree.
As a result, online students already face an
uphill battle because they have less time
than traditional students for their courses.
However, they also face the limitation that
they do not have the face-to-face feedback
from instructors to learn which key concepts
they need to master. As we look to the
future of online learning, a majority of higher
education students can expect to take at
least one online course. In order to enhance
online students’ abilities to utilize the time
they have available for their courses, and instructors’
success in meeting their students’
educational needs, we need solutions that
isolate the most important concepts and
help students master them faster.
This article describes one particular
solution that fills this need, a new product
introduced in November of 2013 called
SmashFact. SmashFact was designed as a
solution for faculty to reduce time making
rudimentary terms and concepts more
engaging and spend less time on remedial
learning. The tool facilitates the learning
process by “gamify-ing” basic course content
and reduces the barriers to success. By
allowing teachers to transfer course content
into a study-game app, students are able to
use the app on any of their devices: phones,
tablets or desktop computers.
Background
Beginning in 1994, I began developing
interactive learning solutions for
higher education. As an instructional
designer and educational technologist at a
university, my job facilitated an opportunity
to meet with faculty and delve deeply into
their educational problems for which they
were seeking solutions.
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