Artefact Four Evaluation

This artefact involved one-on-one interviews with kinesthetic and visual learners. During these interviews the learners were asked to view three websites that had been chosen specifically as they are all aimed to help people gain new knowledge and varied widely in the way they displayed information. Each learner was asked to answer questions about each website including, ‘What would you change?’ and ‘What are your opinions on the layout and colour?’ The aim of this was to help to find out more detailed information from the learners about what they find is useful and what is not from an online learning tool. The feedback varied with each website but there was some consistency on main points such as; overcrowded pages; dull colours; unclear navigation; too much bulk text. When improvements to the sites were discussed it became apparent that dividing the page in a clear way is important, as is text layout. It was also a popular opinion of the learners that sectioning up a page can help to make a lot of information seems less intimidating but if there are too many sections then it can become confusing. Some of the learners commented that they became frustrated with the websites when the navigation was not clear and there were forced to look through a lot of buttons and links hidden in large blocks of text before finding what they wanted. This information is useful, as I have learnt what is effective in online learning tools and what is not. Therefore, in my next artefact I plan to produce a digital version of artefact three to find out if this can be a successful interactive learning tool for visual and kinesthetic learners when based on-screen or if physical movement is too integral to the learning process.

Artefact Four Presentation

Website Games - Drawing

The actionscript was a lot more complicated for this game so I'm glad that I grasped the more basic scripting in my previous two games. I decided to add a drawing board onto the ICT section of the website as it will help to increase mouse accuracy skills in primary school children as well as being a bit of fun.

Artefact Three Evaluation

For this artefact an interactive paper-based learning tool was produced. Eight historical facts were printed, each on a different coloured piece of paper. The aim of this artefact was to find out if the act of physically laying out information could help with the learning process. The test was carried out on ten kinaesthetic and visual learners, each was given the information and asked to lay it out in anyway they thought it would be effective to learn from. A picture was taken of the final layout and then feedback and reasons were given from the learner. The layouts were all different but many learners gave similar reasons for their choices. The main reasons for the layouts included using the dates, similar topics, colour coding, or completely random. The feedback received was positive and it was discovered that, although it was not a particularly physical task, the act of moving and laying out the information helped the learner interact with the information. In general the leaners felt they had absorbed the information more than they would have otherwise. Being in control of the layout encouraged effective learning as it was completely up to the individual which, in turn, made the information more personal to the learner.

Artefact Three Presentation

Website Games - Healthy Eating

Website Games - Environment

From the actionscript I created for my first attempt I was able to build the first of my games in full, I'm really pleased with the result. I realised when testing the game that I needed some sort of timer on the 'well done' message. The 'try again' message stays until the picture is moved and but the 'well done' message now only stays viewable for a few seconds.

Website Game - 1st attempt

I've always struggled with actionscript but I decided to create a few simple Flash games for my website. I think this will make the website far more interesting and appealling. This has also given me the chance to challenge myself even more with this website as I want it to be the best it can possibly. I started by getting some help with basic actionscripting from my tutor and fellow interactive student. This is my first attempt at a game.

Artefact Two Evaluation

The topic of the practical research is ’How can the uses of interactive learning tools help to further understand and promote kinaesthetic and visual learning?’ The first artefact produced was an interactive flash-based learning tool. The user was asked to navigate through various pages of information in any order they chose and then complete a drag and drop game at the end to select true facts out of a selection of both true and false. The test was timed and after this was completed the user was asked to complete a short questionnaire to find out if they are a visual, kinaesthetic or auditory learner. The test was carried out on eleven people aged between 16 and 26 years old. This artefact was designed to find out if an on-screen interactive game would be an effective learning tool for visual and kinaesthetic learners. The on-screen game was scored out of six and although the results were varied between all three types of learner the highest results were achieved by visual and kinaesthetic learners and the lowest by an auditory learner. This appears to prove that visual and kinaesthetic learners have gained knowledge effectively through the use of this on-screen interactive learning tool. The timing of the test was less conclusive with both the lowest and highest time recorded being in the visual and kinaesthetic categories. This test would have been more conclusive if it had been carried out on more people and also if the game had been scored out of a higher number of points therefore giving more varied results.

Artefact Two Presentation

Exhibition Idea

I know it wasn't suggested in the lecture, but going with the Pop Art/ Warhol theme, i quite like the idea of the name SOUP. Soup is a mixture of all different things mixed together to make one thing, which is kind of like Multimedia with all different design disciplines making up one industry. The image below could be used, replacing the word 'tomato' with 'multimedia'.

Final Page Designs

I am really pleased with these designs, using my designs in Photoshop as a base I have started building my website using Dreamweaver. After discussion with my tutor I adjusted my design slightly; by moving the buttons slightly further down and to the left more room is created for the information and images and by lengthening the button bar under the header it becomes an underlining tool also and the page looks more structured.

Artefact Two

For my second research artefact I have decided to design a questionnaire and ask people (mainly multimedia students) to fill it out online. The questionnaire will be simple and quick to fill out as people often lose patience when filling out something very lengthy. I will be using an online tool called surveymonkey.com which allows me to design my questionnaire and provides me with a link to forward to people I would like to complete it. The website will also save the results of the survey for me which makes it simple to analyse. I feel that doing it online will allow me to collect a larger amount of results than I would be bale to by trying to find people face-to-face to fill it out.

The idea behind this is to find out a bit more about visual and kinaesthetic learners. The first part of the questionnaire will help me discover what type of learner the person filling it out is. The second is some quick questions including; favorite and worst GCSE subjects and why; what they think is most and least important when looking at a website to find information; anyway they think online information could be given more effectively. I am hoping to find some interesting correlations in the results that will help me decide where to go next in my research project.

Further Design Ideas

I got some great feedback from my tutor David and friend Camilla about my first website design. We discussed loads of different aspects of the design and just by changing small things such as the buttons it can make so much difference. I am so much happier with my designs now and am confident that these designs will work well for my website.