Q & A with Courtney Calfee, FLVS Curriculum Specialist

 

 

Innovation Spotlight – Conspiracy Code

There are progressive reforms out there in online education, people and organizations who are thinking outside of the box of what it means to engage our students in the online classroom. Florida Virtual School has implemented Conspiracy Code™: American History, a game-based course in American History. It is one of the first courses of its kind to be available to students on a large scale. I like some, was intrigued by the idea, but of course had my reservations. I was lucky enough to set up a interview with Courtney Calfee, FLVS Curriculum Specialist and one of the lead curriculum designers for the project. Below is the QA from our conversation.

What was the inspiration for constructing a course like this?

Florida Virtual School (FLVS) created a partnership with 360ed, a game development company, to design the game interface and a Learning Management System. FLVS also worked with the University of Central Florida to ensure the facilitation of Caine & Caine brain-based learning in instructional design. The interactive nature of gameplay allows for higher order thinking assessment and incentivized learning through engaging gameplay. Conspiracy Code™: American History was created as an appealing, interactive game-based program with the hopes of leveraging technology to effectively engage students and teach them social studies content knowledge and skills. The historical content is tied into game interaction and storyline to create a meaningful learning experience.

Describe what an example unit looks like, including instruction methods and assessment. What do the assessments look like? Are they authentic?

Conspiracy Code™: American History is organized into 10 missions that are mostly linear, but also organized thematically to allow students to identify changes over history and gain a deeper understanding of historical content. Florida Virtual School students collect historical clues which contain a chunk of information such as text, images, video, audio, primary documents, chart, etc. To check for understanding, the student receives a mini-game following each clue that requires them to select the appropriate images for the clue, answer a Wheel of Fortune- type game, put events in order, or perform another quick content knowledge check. Throughout the game, students are on the hunt to identify enemy agents by asking them historical questions. If the character tells historical inaccuracies, the player knows that this character is an agent. The player can then challenge the agent to a content knowledge duel, which if successful, will remove the agent from the game. Students submit their Conspiracy Logs to their instructors throughout the mission and answer higher cognitive level questions about the content to ensure understanding. Students collaborate in the Forum by participating in discussions on historical content. Finally, the students complete a discussion-based assessment with their instructor and complete an authentic mission project demonstrating mastery over the content.

What data have you collected that illustrates Conspiracy Code’s success?

Conspiracy Code™: American History is currently being tested with students to validate and measure learning gains through efficacy testing.  Florida Virtual School students should finalize course work and study activities through the summer months, and a report will be available by the end of the year.

How is this course culturally responsive or helps to serve the needs of all students? How is the course differentiated?

The students encounter a wide-range of characters throughout the course which allows students to see someone like them in the game. Students can take this course for honors credit and are encouraged to extend their thinking with culminating mission projects. Additionally, students are allowed to progress through the game at their own pace to allow time to digest the content and review content. The content is chunked into manageable pieces of history to help students digest information before moving on to new content. The Conspiracy Code™: American History mini-games help all students evaluate their understanding of clues before moving on to new material.

How do students collaborate with each other?

The students taking Conspiracy Code™: American History participate in a forum where they collaborate and discuss historical topics.

Regarding efficiency: How do you know that this is an efficient use of learning time?

The teachers provide constant feedback on their students’ level of engagement by conducting discussion-based assessments with their Conspiracy Code™: American History students. The documentation of the interaction demonstrates that the students gain a deeper understanding of American History than in traditional courses.

What are your plans for extending this type of course design to other FLVS courses? Will you keep the theme of “conspiracy” or branch out into other thematic games?

Future plans include a development of a middle school U.S. History course and a high school World History course using the same characters in different environments.  Currently, we also have an Intensive Reading version of the course being tested in lab settings for a blended model delivery.

How do you train teachers on teaching this type of course? How is the same or different from teaching other traditional FLVS courses?

We train teachers on Conspiracy Code™: American History by giving them hands-on experience in the course.  Our teachers are all very highly-qualified and knowledgeable in their own subject areas so they are already awesome teachers – we just need to train them to use their skills in a slightly different environment.

What has been your biggest learning experience as a course designer for Conspiracy Code?

The most rewarding learning experience has been to see how content goals and gameplay goals can be integrated and accomplished together.

Conspiracy Code™: American History is definitely appealing to a variety of learners and can serve as an engaging environment to learn important content. There are a variety of assessments, media and activities to check students understanding of the context, as well as learn the content initially. As the developers are reflective, they see some potential to reflect and improve upon the course. I think the next step is building authenticity for an outside audience in a course design, similar to Jane McGonigal’s Evoke project, as well as true collaboration to produce the assessments, more than simply chatting on a discussion board. Conspiracy Code™: American History is a great example of thoughtful innovation and commitment to exciting options for all students. Like Jane McGonigal says, “Gaming can make the world a better place,” so why not allow our students game to learn.