Internet Learning Volume 4, Number 2, Fall 2015 | Page 97

Internet Learning
group of software professionals who worked
together on the same team worked on a
team project and posted their project a week
early.
Goal 3: Collaboration and communication
Students completed project status
reports in prior classes, but due to the time
constraints and a poor understanding of
how to complete them, most posted only
one status report. During the case study,
every student in the hybrid and online
case study classes completed two of the
project status reports, and in the hybrid
class, 88% completed a third report, and
in the online class, 85% completed a third
report. A critic might observe that without
the game’s rewards, their desire to keep
their teammates informed on the project’s
progress might have been less detailed.
Goal 4: Individual Assessment of Team
Project Activities
While it is common to assign a team
grade for a shared project, past classes featured
assigned duties on the project and discrete
measurements for tracking participation,
project decisions, task completion and
progress. These individual measurements
mirrored the process of project development
in the workplace and the status reports
featured each team member’s status with
regard to the Progress, Plans and Problems
related to specific project sections.
Ensuring a cohesive project that
demonstrates the use of a replicable process
is not easy with novice learners, and they
need opportunities to fail and discover
alternative strategies. In games, failure is
often a barrier to success that is overcome
through trying new strategies and learning
from past mistakes. These same strategies
were used in the project development. In
the hybrid class, the instructor played the
role of a person who was ill-informed on the
project’s goals and process. As the presumed
fount of all knowledge, the instructor would
offer outrageous advice and give insights
into common myths that invade everyday
practices.
The students as players were
encouraged to point out the problems with
these “helpful” tips and to take a leadership
role to guide, inform, modify and in some
cases, strengthen the process used during
project development. In the online class,
85% completed all of the bonus activities,
sharing the leadership role and keeping their
teams informed on the project’s progress.
88% of the hybrid class completed most
of the bonus activities, but not all of them.
This may be due to their weekly face-to-face
meetings and other mechanisms for sharing
information.
Goal 5: Successful Team Experience and
Team Project
A peer evaluation was completed
prior to submitting the project, and on it,
each team member rated the contributions
of their teammates and noted how they had
contributed. These peer reviews were also
worth gold coins and provided another
perspective for assessing the value of each
team member’s contributions. Increased
satisfaction and perceptions of the process
and value of online teamwork featured
highly during the feedback from the class,
and over 30% of the participants asked for
more quests once the class ended. They did
not want to stop playing at the end of the
course. While indirect, it was one of the
more powerful insights from the experience.
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