Bitconnect Milestone 4

Milestone 4 Video

Original Synopsis

Schools are having a hard time adapting to remote life.

For younger kids, it’s easy to get distracted, demotivated or depressed because of the lack of social interaction. Children rely on context cues and social interaction to succeed academically and socially, and the existing virtual education ecosystem leaves many students at a disadvantage.

We propose a solution to virtual learning for younger students that reduces anxiety, fosters a social environment, and engages students in an interactive virtual environment by using existing, popular, moddable online video games as a platform for education.

User Stories

As a student, I want to be able to add questions to a game so that my peers and I can play and answer these questions together. (Mohammed)

Interactive Questions Demo


For this user story, we decided to allow students to add questions next to the objects in the game, such as Minecraft, with no need to go to a dedicated questions page. This user story aligns with two themes of our proposed solution: reducing anxiety and engaging students in an interactive virtual environment. Students will be able to ask questions and view others’ questions with respect with questions in the game while being anonymous if they choose to. We believe that the design based on this user story will encourage students to ask questions because of the appealing new way of asking questions and because of the anonymization. For starters of this design, we show a message on how to add interactive questions to the game. If players get to know how to do it, they can click on a button in the message so that the message will not appear again.

As a student, I want to be able to choose or upload an avatar so that the game becomes engaging and I become anonymous if I choose to. (Mohammed)

Avatar Creation Demo


For this user story, we decided to allow students to choose an avatar to play freely without being judged by others. They also can choose to add an avatar of their own which gives them more control on the interface. This user story also aligns with two themes of our proposed solution: reducing anxiety among students and engaging students in an interactive virtual environment. In this, we allow students to choose an avatar among three categories: human avatar, superhero avatar, and animal avatar. They also can choose an avatar of their choice by uploading an image of that avatar. While the design based on this user story increases anonymization, it is also engaging because students get to choose an avatar that represents them, their identity, or their interest.

As a student, I want to be able to choose a nickname so that the game becomes engaging and I become anonymous if I choose to. (Mohammed)

Nickname Creation Demo


For this user story, we decided to allow students to choose a nickname for themselves based on their responses to a set of questions, such as their favorite city or game. They also can use a nickname of their own which gives them more control on the interface. This user story aligns with two themes of our proposed solution: reduce anxiety and engaging students in an interactive virtual environment. The design increases anonymization while giving the students the ability to add their real name. It is also engaging because students get a chance to represent themselves, their identity, or their interests.

As a student, I want to use gamified assignments to keep track of my progress and encourage me to improve my skills through the use of leaderboards, tournaments, and ranks/levels. (Kathy)

Scoreboard Demo


This user story is critical to our prototype because leaderboards, rankings, and other progress report metrics provide a source of motivation for students to continue engaging with the software. By releasing interesting leaderboard metrics, students become more motivated to set achievable academic goals for themselves. In this way, these metrics provide flexibility to different learning styles and offer students both intrinsic (out-ranking other students) and extrinsic motivation (out-ranking personal best). The rankings also include an easy-to-use system which allows teachers to provide feedback and leave small encouraging comments.

As a student, I want to be able to see my friends’ virtual avatars and interact with them/work together as opposed to just seeing their camera in a zoom call. (Christian)

Group Game Demo


This user story applies to the multiplayer/group game prototype because it allows students to interact and play with each other while learning. Instead of simply seeing their classmates’ cameras while the teacher teaches, students are more excited and inclined to learn the material if they can do so with their classmates and their colorful, personalized avatars. It reduces the stress and anxiety that would come along with a multiplayer game that used students’ cameras instead. Because socialization is important for students, there is a chat feature which lets students interact with each other in-game as well.

As a student, I want to use gamified assignments to keep track of my progress and encourage me to improve my skills through the use of leaderboards, tournaments, and ranks/levels. (Nathan)

Quests Demo


We decided to treat this user story as an epic and split it into multiple user stories. This prototype covers the quests/rank portion of the epic. Since our overall design revolves around the idea of education paradigms built into video games, it’s important to relate as much of the interface to common video game paradigms as possible. For this reason, we’ve organized what we would traditionally call quizzes or homeworks into “quests”.

These quests reside in the quest tracker on the right hand side of the screen. They are either distributed by the professor, or through various NPC characters in the game. They represent class assignments for various subjects, and upon completion, they award some amount of points.

These points, called “xp” are used to measure the student’s overall progress and ranking. This aligns with our proposed solution because it introduces gamified assignments (which could be easily modified to support various school curriculum) that encourage students to not only progress at their own pace, but also give them the option to compete in the classroom for ranking.

Unused User Stories

Teacher User Stories

All of our Teacher User Stories were dropped from use in the final prototype. This is due to the fact that we chose to focus on designing the program exclusively from the perspective of the students. This choice was made to create a more coherent narrative through which to design our prototype and further increase the coherence of our program. Additionally, this makes it much simpler to create a functional prototype of our program.

Student User Stories

As a student, I want to be able to browse games for each class so that I can join and play with my peers in that class at any time.

Justification: This user story does not fit the general purpose of the program we plan to design. We intend it so that “games” are joined at scheduled class times, rather than at any time. Thus, we would have static groups for an entire class, or for preselected student groups within a class

As a student, I want the virtual learning environment to be easy for me to learn how to use.

Justification: We thought this user story was a bit too broad. We designed our prototypes in a way that is meant to be easy to use to begin with, so we felt that an entire user story dedicated to the concept was not needed. Most of our prototypes include either help text or instructions on completing the given task.

As a student, I want to see and use common video game paradigms (inventory management, hotbar, common interaction keys, typical camera system, WASD movement, etc.) so that the learning curve for the interface is minimal.

Justification: This implementation is unfit for a user story. User stories should describe some end goal and reasoning for a user, not the actual agency by which they achieve those goals. We decided to not use this user story, since movement systems and paradigms aren’t a goal of the user, but rather a tool that is given to the user to accomplish their goal.

As a student, I want to be able to enroll in my teacher’s class as easily as possible

Justification: We felt as if this user story was outside of the scope of the prototypes we wanted to create. We wanted to focus on the actual parts of the virtual environment instead, such as avatar/nickname creation and the games, rather than the specific enrollment and class aspects. It can be assumed that enrollment takes place outside our current design area.

As a student, I want to be anonymous when I fall short while playing the game.

This user story was a subset of the user story: “As a student, I want to be able to use a nickname so that I can play without being too shy.”, so we decided to remove it in favor of the more descriptive user story. Giving the student the option for a nickname seemed more appropriate rather than granting them full on anonymity.

Testing Protocol

Our research question could simply be: “Is our education program effective in helping student users learn?” However, as we are using a gamified experience to drive engagement, enjoyment is an important factor in the value of our tool. Ergo, our full research question would be: “Is our education program effective in helping student users learn in an enjoyable way.”

The most effective way to test this is to use a focus group. This allows us to collect feedback directly from potential student users. Additionally, we should have an exit survey for focus group members to complete to gauge their satisfaction with our program. Ergo, we would use a mixed testing protocol between focus groups and surveys.

The main design for our focus group will have 4 parts. First, the user will be given a pre-test to gauge what knowledge they have on a predetermined subject, such as the topic of trees. After that, the users will be asked to complete a short, one-hour course using our learning software in the preselected subject. After a period of 24 hours, they will be given a follow-up test on the subject to gauge how much knowledge was gained and how well it was retained. Finally, they will be given a short survey to gauge how well they felt they learned the subject, and how much they enjoyed using the software, as well as any ways the user feels we may improve our program.

This is not an experiment. Blinding of any kind is not necessary, thus, information can be shared freely. Before agreeing to participate in the focus group, focus group members will be told exactly what will be asked of them, full details will be shared about the nature of the two tests, the program, and the exit survey. Additionally, focus group participants may exit at any time for any reason.

We intend to collect four points of data; one from each of the tests, and two from the exit survey. From the pretest, we wish to gauge the incoming knowledge of the student users. From the exit test, we will gauge how much the student learned and how well they retained that knowledge over a week. From the exit survey, we will learn about the user’s enjoyment, and anything the users feel we could do to improve the program. We will analyze the difference between the pre- and post-tests to see how well the students learn from our program. From the user enjoyment data, we will see how fun the program is. And, from all the surveys, common suggestions or complaints will help us learn how to improve the program in general.

Our program is specifically designed to be used during social distancing. The entire point of our program is for students to stay safe and have fun while learning. Thus, it is important for our research to be done as safely as possible. We will only interact with our focus group student users via the internet. Our pre-test, virtual course, post-test, and exit survey can and will all be administered over the internet.

Resources and Fair Use:

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Inspiration for some prototypes came from:

Credits