Education Team/Content Creation Guidelines

These guidelines are intended to help game developers, volunteers, and those creating interactive educational content for the classroom to design their content to achieve the desired educational outcomes. These guidelines are intended to be pedagogy agnostic.

• Do not spoon feed answers: make sure that the problem and the answer are never both visible at the same time (with the exception of multiple choice). For example recording voices of content being read can lower reading scores!
  • When writing questions and hints do so in a way that gets the learner to understand, analzye, categorize, think and comprehend rather than just memory recall. Even if a test appears to be about recall, the only way learners will succeed is by thoughtful understanding of the topic. Exception: language and vocab learning.
• For multiple choice questions
  • Make sure that the answer to select varies (e.g. not always second answer)
  • Think as the learner will think and try to find where they might be most likely to make a mistake. Use this to make some attractive wrong answers to include.
  • Use at least one interactive game format in each lesson
• Professional appearance:
  • Make sure to use good quality resolution pictures
  • Keep fonts and colors consistent
  • Align pictures / text etc.
• Do not violate copyright. Use local resources / creative commons materials (e.g. wikipedia) wherever possible (Hint to find Wikipedia pictures you can google site:commons.wikipedia.org)
• Text should not be as an image file. Where this is the case in the book it must be typed (size matters)
• For interactive mini games
  • Make sure that in order to play the game the student should understand the concept being taught (e.g. game for living / non living items)
  • If pictures are possibly not going to be understood by the target audience add captions.
  • Games should be slightly challenging: Not impossible but not too straightforward. It is OK if the student might have to try twice etc. to complete it.
  • Games should provide structured feedback to the learner (e.g. correct/incorrect, timers, point scores, etc)
  • Where possible design games in a manner where children should experiment and learn through the game from it's feedback instead of providing all the information and examples needed in advance.
  • Where possible provide audio feedback
  • Where possible and appropriate use animation / effects
  • Do not prevent the user from advancing wherever possible - allow them to continue and come to a question they find challenging later to prevent frustration.
• Use pictures and graphics generously wherever possible / reasonable.
• Use rewards / positive feedback at regular intervals (Excellent ! Good Job ! Clapping, pat on the back, etc...) Can also show special pictures etc. after a quiz or game is complete.