Immediate Learning for Young People

Determining exactly what immediate learning young people are deriving from WickED has been an almost impossible task for the research team. Finding student users of the site and determining how students are using the site to support schoolwork and homework activities has been difficult. When interviewed, students said they were learning particularly from the interactives but examples of the extent and ways the resources were being used to support their learning were not provided. Because the site does not attract text interaction, no archived transcript material exists and so it is impossible to extract explicit examples of the kinds of learning occurring.

There is some evidence from student interviews that the site provides some alignment with their schoolwork. Students indicated they were spurred to use WickED in conjunction with schoolwork and had found it helpful although no specific information, indicating in what ways the site was helpful to them, was provided. Evidence that these younger students were looking for help with maths in particular and also in science can be seen in the interest in content areas in Figure 6, and also the number of hits in the server statistics on the ‘Maths Stuff’ area and associated interactives. (Research team – observation notes).

Students appeared to most enjoy using the interactive activities especially the games and quizzes and indicated they learned from these activities to both the CORE research team and in the Nielsen NetRatings survey. The site, especially the ‘Cool Stuff‘ and ‘interactive’ areas, does appear to be engaging for students. If it can be assumed that engagement in an activity leads to learning then it can perhaps be assumed that at least some incidental and informal learning is occurring. The ‘Maths stuff’ area which was well stocked with interactives had much higher levels of visitation and interest than the science stuff which students were motivated to visit because of alignment with schoolwork but where students considered the content was lacking in interactives and was therefore less interesting or ‘boring.’

On closer questioning there were many areas of the site that students who were interviewed had never visited. Students did not appear to know about some areas of the site including ‘Korero Mai’, ‘literacy stuff’, ‘technology stuff’ or any of the forums. Some had made a couple of visits to ‘maths stuff’, ‘science stuff’ and the ‘information station’ but there was little interest expressed about going back. WickED TV had been too blurry to use. Some schools had blocked student ability to access chats and forums generally so that students did not bother with this type of interaction from school.

A closer look at several of the activities themselves would indicate there is an element of ‘busy work’ in some of the activities that are intended to be completed independently. (Research team – observation notes). Prensky (2005) makes an interesting distinction between ‘mini games’ and ‘complex games’. It is clear that many of the interactives on WickED can be classified as ‘mini games’ Prensky defines ‘mini-games’ as having,

• "little complexity – they typically provide one single type of challenge (along with minor variations)…and …include practically all of the small “learning games” found on a great variety of web sites, including the BBC, and National Geographic… They treat only one subject, puzzle or gameplay type in a small way. They are (almost) always trivial. (p.5)."

Prensky goes on to say,

• "In education, mini-games are good for providing motivation to practice particular focused skills.  But individual mini-games don’t educate. They lack the breadth and depth necessary to do so. (p.6)."

Complex games on the other hand can be distinguished from ‘mini games’ by requiring multiple players, and the need for players to be creative, collaborative, except challenge, and be competitive.

• "A complex game requires a player to learn a wide variety of often new and difficult skills and strategies, and to master these skills and strategies by advancing through dozens of ever-harder “levels.” Doing this often requires both outside research and collaboration with others while playing. (p.7)."

If the instructional design of the resources themselves does not allow for various ways in which the students themselves can dig deeper with their learning, then there is a need for facilitators to assist the process. WickED is also intended to be available for use by teachers with their classes. The teachers’ role in using WickED resources increases in importance where there is a lack of interaction with online facilitators, who can assist with interpretation and management of the learning process. Many of the interactive activities provided may be more conducive to deeper learning when combined with the scaffolded support of teachers especially where they are incorporated as skills practice activities within broadly based units of work or integrated curriculum topics, or inquiry based approaches. Where the teacher can better scaffold WickED activities and better relate them to classroom activities the more likely that incidental and informal learning will be better contextualised and translate to deeper learning for the student.