What is it like working in a busy marketing department in a competitive industry? Students at Anglia Ruskin's Faculty of Business & Law have been experiencing a rich real-life 360 degree simulation using Canvas as a learning platform. The world of the supermarket unveils itself over four weeks as the students battle crises, a cast of difficult and demanding colleagues, and internal and external pressures as they get the job done in real time. Cheryl will share her learnings and explain how the learning platform and a variety of active learning techniques can be successfully used to improve employability skills.

The metaphor of a jigsaw to describe the learning technology and environment of any teaching institution has three major constraints; the ‘picture on the box’ doesn’t exist, other than for fleeting moments; each participant has an incomplete view of the pieces available, and may themselves be holding pieces that other’s can’t see; and pieces can be added, modified, or permanently removed from play at any point by internal and external events or actors.

This short session conceptualises an organisational ‘4D Learning Technology puzzle’. This early model seeks to recognise that learning technologies, their dependencies and affordances emerge over time, and that knowledge and expertise is often organisationally siloed. Further, whilst a complete picture may not (or ever) exist, even a partially completed picture can serve as a map of the territory, help to identify issues and opportunities, and to iterate and improve understanding.

The aim of the session is to take the fear out of designing escape room style puzzles by showing how easy they are to make even on a limited budget. The speakers will explain the benefits of using puzzles and games in the classroom, describe how they developed their own puzzles and will provide participants with the chance to test out the puzzles themselves.

Team work will be encouraged and materials and props will be provided.

Abstract: Performance feedback is pervasive but its effects are not well-understood. Why do they vary across individuals? Do performance effects depend on how feedback is presented? Using a novel experimental design, we show that the effects of performance feedback do depend on the design of feedback systems, and that feedback effects vary with task motivation, competitive preferences, and extrinsic incentives. A feedback system that incorporates elaborate point systems, symbolic rewards, relative performance and narrative structure significantly increases effort, but only for those who are task-motivated. Relative performance feedback, standard in organizations seeking to increase productivity, is effective by itself, but only among those who are task-motivated and have strong preferences for competition. Feedback that explicitly ties individuals’ effort to a larger narrative or purpose also has a significant effect on effort, but moreso among the least task-motivated.

The session will involve two core parts. Firstly it will explore the use of a VR enhanced game at our London School. Secondly it will explore the pedagogic potential of VR enhanced Aviation English curriculum both the point of view of students and teaching staff suing an Oculus Rift and a mobile device in our school in Fort Lauderdale in Forida. Online questionnaires were given to both staff and students.The results will be discussed and explored during the session, moving towards best practice of embedding gamified and VR enhanced approaches.

Virtual reality (VR) technology has been capturing the public imagination for decades. VR software applications that allow for interactive immersion are emerging as a renowned medium in many areas, including educating the public in biochemistry-related subjects via public engagement events. We developed an immersive, interactive and educational virtual reality (VR) game named Bug Off Pain that increases scientific literacy about chronic pain and spider venoms among the public and high school students. Here, VR was shown to be an innovative and fun approach to learning and public engagement in biochemistry. Bug Off Pain places the viewer inside the brain and shows the molecular system that allows people to sense pain. After securing three (learning) points via the multimedia-based clips, this experience translates to the interactive game. Here, a player has to choose a venom that shuts down the pain until that results in “pain over.” Interestingly, our study measuring the effectiveness of Bug Off Pain revealed that VR is a better learning method then video. Bug Off Pain can be played on two different VR platforms; Oculus Rift and Android devices and is now freely downloadable via our website www.bugoffpain.com.

Authors: Lucka Bibic*, Justinas Druskis, Samuel Walpole, Jesus Angulo, Leanne Stokes