I began this project with the idea that I would create a unit that I might be able to potentially talk my boss into letting me teach as an online professional development offering. I also wanted to break out from my day-to-day use of Blackboard as a course building and management tool and thought it would be fun and challenging to attempt to find a WordPress template that would lend itself to a teaching-lesson-assessment format. In hindsight, I probably could have just used a regular WordPress template and tweaked it, but then I found Academy, purchased it, and got to work.
I then got very attached to the theme and probably a little too enthusiastic about the bells and whistles, both included in the package and additional add-ons I opted to upload. I really wanted to use the quiz feature, and I really wanted students to only be able to navigate to lesson parts in a sequential order and only after they'd answered some questions or confirmed that they’d done an action. I found a discussion forum plug-in and I attempted to add in an automatic badge awarding system and seriously got way, way off track.
I forged ahead though and continued gathering my content and adding in resources and obsessing over the correct shades of purple to use (yes, seriously) and then, when I had two out of three units completely finished, I asked some friends to register and test out the class. I expected to hear about them having a really cool and unique experience; instead I received email after email with questions, issues, and tons of uncertainty.
I think that the problem really stemmed from the fact that I’d worked in the template format for so many weeks that I didn't have enough objectivity to see that some of my design elements and decisions were unnecessarily rigid and confusing. I attempted to make my navigation instructions more explicit but even after round two of harassing my friends for feedback it didn't seem to help.
I'll admit it. I was a little crushed. I really didn't want to let that template go, but with time ticking away I eventually had to come to terms with the fact that I had to get my content up. I also couldn't take the risk of people in my class having a poor encounter with my unit lessons so I went back to the original Google sites assignment tool and built out my teaching website.
In hindsight, had I been thinking a bit more clearly and with slightly less emotion I probably should have just removed all of the prerequisite blocks I'd opted to place between lesson parts and still used the WordPress page, but without having all of the extra bells and whistles it seemed a bit pointless and silly. That being said I do still want to continue experimenting with that theme and maybe someday I'll get it to behave exactly as I'd originally planned and hoped. As for how the site stands now, I’m satisfied with it. While I doubt I'll ever actually get to teach this as a real class I still think that having all of the information organized in one place is extremely helpful. I've even found more game related articles this week that I've continued adding to the resources page so I think I'll just continue doing that when I come across noteworthy items. My interest in game based learning and Gamification use in education isn’t going away anytime soon so at least now I have a dedicated place to house and round out that hobby, even if it is just for personal use.