Today I met with Nashwa Ismail, my collaborator for the next six weeks on the Opposites Attract challenge, which I first wrote about a couple of weeks back. We had some say in our collaboration partners, but the final decision was made by the organisers, which I’m thankful for because everyone I’d met at the earlier session was so good it would have been very hard for me to choose.
We talked a little bit about each others studies. Nashwa shared with me her “game metaphore” for building interactive communities of practice among students using on-line collaboration tools (such as wikis). As I read, way back in August 2014, students get more out of online discussions, the more they put in. So Nashwa’s efforts are about enabling course leaders to better encourage that on-line interaction among their students. *edit* I forgot to mention we also discussed the debate around learning styles, which I prefer to think of as preferences, and Nashwa shared another free on-line test, the VARK questionnaire, which I hadn’t seen before. I’m pleased to see that, although headlined “learning styles”, it tells me I have a “learning preference.” I had a go this morning, and I’ve posted my results above.
The game that she is using as a metaphor for the process is a board-game a bit like snakes and ladders. We talked about the different motivational mechanics that games use, and soon we were talking about gamification. In the end we had the beginnings of an idea about creating a motivational app for course leaders.
More anon.
The Interpretation Game 
Mathew, I have just seen your “VARK “test result, interestingly that “K” is the least scoring among your learning preferences, I would love to discuss this further with you to see the matching between your thought and the result.