Sunday, November 29, 2015

Why do so many online platforms fail, and not even productively?

Productive Failure is my favorite of Vander Ark's eight principles of productive gamification. I've worked with a lot of different online platforms over the quarters, and even when the activities are decent, the feedback provided is usually terrible: most of the platforms will just tell students they got an answer wrong without telling them why, which is a really big pet peeve of mine. How are my students supposed to learn if they don't understand what they did wrong? The whole point of productive failure is that students are able to test hypotheses and receive feedback that then lets them modify their hypotheses as needed before trying again. If you're a student who is struggling with a brand-new concept, which is more helpful to you: the knowledge that you got an answer wrong, or the knowledge that you got an answer wrong and here's why and here's a tip to help you do better next time?  I understand that providing detailed and constructive automated feedback can be time consuming on the part of publishers, but if you're going to do something---and especially if students are going to have to pay to access that something---then at least have the decency to do it right.

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