WP2_Deliverable6_Reward_Models


 

 For further details see: http://creativecommons.org/

>>back to WP2

 

Deliverable 6 – Reward Model

pdf print-out: WP2_Deliverable6_Reward_Models .pdf

 

Overall Summary

This deliverable describes our thoughts and findings about how to improve participant's motivation by means of rewarding them. The result is a prototypic reward model and an example of how it is instantiated by a course.It is linked to the other deliverables in this work-package and the work-packages 3 and 4 of the AVALON project. It is a “living” document during the project live-time, starting with basic assumptions prior designing the action learning events and will later incorporate the lessons learnt from the actual execution of these learning events.

 

Contents

  1. Audience
  2. Motivation
  3. Integration into Avalon
  4. Reward Model Development
    1.  General Approach
    2. What to give a reward for?
    3. Whom to give a reward?
    4. What rewards?
    5. Methodology in the Avalon Project
    6. Basic assumptions
  5. How to Apply Assumption in Avalon Teaching Scenarios
  6. Reward Model Design and Recommendations

 

Audience

The special focus of this deliverable is to model those meta-data features, which are reflecting the motivation why people would like to participate and stay in action learning events. Thus the intended audience of this deliverables are course designers, content creators and educators delivering the course.

 

Motivation

Why do we need to think about reward models?

Let's first think about why do people decide to participate in a language course? Obviously, because they (or at least the logical component of their brain) consider it being important to improve their language skills. What makes people stay in the course although their timetables are loaded with other duties? At this point it becomes useful to address the emotional part as well - and this is, what a reward model should do. It should reward participants for their achievements, thus motivate them to stay and do more. There is no doubt, that improving language skills is a big reward on itself, but, in our hearts, we are all little kids, that want to get some candy from time to time.

 

It's a nice feature of virtual worlds, that these candies can be realised quite simple. It's another nice feature of virtual worlds that social motivations (that are clearly among the most powerful motivational factors for human beings) can also be supported very well – thus they become a central element of our proposed reward model.

 

Integration into Avalon

In the Avalon-project we use reward models for several reasons:

 

 

Some members of the Avalon-team wrote an article on reward models, which was published at the ICIS 2010. It gives a profound background information about that topic and is highly suggested as further reading: http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=5534711

 

Reward Model Development


 General Approach

When introducing a reward model into a course several issues must be considered:

What to give a reward for?

Normally a course has a primary goal (e.g. improving fluency and self-confidence in business situations), but beside that, there might be other dimensions, that are important for the success of a course, thus should be rewarded as well. Good examples are social skills (e.g. teamwork), technical skills (mastering the environment) or creativity.
 

Whom to give a reward?

Part of this question is classical grading: A measurement-process is needed that maps achievements to rewards. It should be comprehensible and fair. With a good set of criteria, we can (ideally) track activity and progress of each participant. Depending on the course (goals), student level and trainer resources some of the following criteria might be used for assessing language skill (for each criteria there should be a qualitative description of what assessment means):

The model should be flexible enough to reward very individual achievements, e.g. "special award for the best presentation ever given by someone who thought he could never speak in public".
 

What rewards?

There are 2 main kinds of rewards:

 

 

Which awards you choose depends on the institution, the budget, the community and the characteristics of the virtual world used.
 

Methodology in the Avalon Project

 

Basic assumptions

  1. We are all little kids that need candy (at least from time to time).

  2. There is no stronger motivation than social motivation – thus this must be exploited.

  3. There are more types of rewards than obvious at first glance.

  4. There are more types of assessment-mechanisms than obvious at first glance.

  5. A reward model is a powerful tool for the course designer / educator.

  6. A reward model is a powerful tool for the participant.

  7. Rewards are the driving force behind motivation.

 

 

How to Apply Assumption in Avalon Teaching Scenarios

 

We are all little kids that need candy (at least from time to time)

It's a nice feature of virtual worlds, that these candies can be realised quite simple. A simple way to stand apart from the crowd is an optical difference. For example the color of a students’ hats could change according to their reputation gained in the learning community or they could wear a shirt with some text on the chest; they could have another title (floating above their heads), or some special equipment.

Thus there is a big variety of possible rewards that do not cost anything but the instructor's brainpower.
 

There is no stronger motivation than social motivation

Think about your last workout: Did you do it alone? Or did you have an appointment with a friend? Think about how more often you do hard activities, when there is some other person, that's doing it with you!

Things that are done in virtual worlds feel real.

Activities with people in a virtual world result in a truly social experience.

The brain does not make a difference between experiences that happened in virtual worlds and in the real world. Even if the world is virtual: The experience, the learning, the collaboration and communication with people does not only feel real, but IS real. This is a strength of the 3D medium – which needs to become exploited.
 

How can social motivation be exploited using virtual worlds? Some examples:

How could that be reflected in reward models? Some examples:

There are more types of rewards than we think at first glance.

There are many different categories of reward.

Literature mostly lists the following four: Glory, Sustenance, Access, Facility.

Applied to our teaching scenarios, this could mean the following:

 

Beyond those 4 'explicit' rewards, we can also think of rewards in a more general way: Everything that contributes to the student's motivation could be seen as a part of the reward model – borders between 'course design' and 'reward model design' are floating. In this category we consider being especially appropriate for teaching in virtual worlds:
 

 

There are more types of assessment-mechanisms that yield rewards than we think at first glance.

Giving rewards needs prior assessment. We like assessments that are not done by the trainer, but by other people, e.g. expert or peers.

A reward model is a powerful tool for the course designer / educator.

Thinking about reward models drives the attention to

These are exactly the 3 crucial issues when designing a course. Clear learning goals (and their communication) enable the student to decide whether the course meets his or her learning demands. Measuring the student's achievements in regards to the goals is valuable feedback for the student and profoundly contributes to the student's motivation as it draws a map indicating the starting point, the goal and the student's current road and position.
 

Reward models do not need to be fancy, but they must be considered.In virtual worlds, distributing rewards is easy and tempting. Nevertheless we must keep in mind, that a reward model must be carefully aligned with the course's characteristics and participant's profile. The reward model needs to make sense in the course's context - and that's where things become more difficult and the course designer's creativity is challenged.The rewards must be tied to the course's objectives, in other words, students that get a reward should have acquired some of the skills that the course designer had in mind. There is the potential that the dynamics of a course change in an unexpected and undesirable way as soon as the rewards become adapted by the student's community (e.g. students trade rewards amongst each other instead of winning them on their own; students specialise in certain fields, where they get most rewards). Finally: Don't forget to think about the budget: Rewards might cost money - there must be a budget for it.
 

A reward model is a powerful tool for the participant.

Learning is sometimes painful. Especially for working adults with family it's a permanent struggle for time-allocation. Using a clever course design with rewards in many different respects (never forget the social dimension!) can greatly contribute to a student's successful accomplishment of a course. The more dimensions we can offer, the more there will be something in it for everyone: There are students, that will be motivated by collecting e.g. language items, for others playing a game or working on a task with their team might be more interesting. In any case: a clever reward system will help students achieving their goals.

 

Examples

For examples how the described ideas were applied in the various courses, please refer to the descriptions of the various courses, especially the „Business English“ course and the „Italian for Beginners“ course: 

 

Reward Model Design and Recommendations

The experience that we gained during the Avalon-courses with applying reward models clearly showed the potential of reward models – as well as potential problems.

Here is a short summary of what is already mentioned above – focussing on the highlights on what we have learned:

 

Think about a reward model from the very beginning.

The reward model must be an integral part of the design process of the whole course. By squeezing it in at the end you a lot of its benefits get lost.

 

Alignment: the reward model must fit into the context; everything artificial is counterproductive; we can't just reuse mechanisms from the online gaming world. The Avalon-team spent a lot of time thinking about developing a group-access model for Avalon-island, which would grant certain permissions to students that successfully finished a course. However, we couldn't find a meaningful context for this. Similar, we couldn't find items that students would be interested in (the 'golden sword'). We thought about setting up a store, were students could purchase items for money that they earned in class, but there wasn't enough evidence that this would result in contributing to our goals in terms of motivation and engagement.

 

Interface to real world

If you see a chance to include real world issues – use it! From the motivational point of view these are especially strong. The 'fulfilment of a wish' is a nice and simple way to do it.

 

Don't miss the chance for a big 'final event'

The final class is the ideal opportunity for the teacher to sum up, to point out, to reward; to give the floor to the students and let shine. Give them a final reward. It's what the student takes home (also in his or her memory!): a certificates or a t-shirts doesn't cost you anything and is a nice memory. If you have some budgets, real-life books (or amazon-vouchers) are a nice way to do it.

Make sure the final class is a celebration, a really big event! Invite special guests, experts or celebrities. If your course has a kind of winner, then ideally it would be a jury, and not the course instructor, that would decide who wins.

 

Award as many students as possible. individually!

Normally a course has a primary goal (e.g. improving fluency and self-confidence in business situations), but beside that, there might be other dimensions, that are important for the success of a course, thus should be rewarded as well. Good examples are social skills (e.g. teamwork), technical skills (mastering the environment) or creativity.

This is a good chance for the instructor to show to students, that you see them as individuals. Why not give a "special award for the best presentation ever given by someone who thought he could never speak in public" ?

 

You can use award-mechanism to recruit people.

If you award participants with promotion to a certain role or membership of a group you can collect people with special skills (e.g. those, who proofed to be technical fit and helpful) and offer them participation in later courses (e.g. as tutor). This does not only add to their glory, but might also help them earn real money.

 

References

Molka-Danielsen J, L. Panichi, M. Deutschmann (2010). Reward Models for Active Language Learning in 3D Virtual Wolrds. In: Information Sciences and Interaction Sciences (ICIS), 2010 3rd International Conference on 

 

>>back to WP2 

 

This project has been funded with support from the European Commission. This publication reflects the views only of the author, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.

 Second Life © is a registered trademark of LindenLab coorp., San Francisco. Other mentioned trademarks are respected properties of their owners.