A few weeks ago now, I mentioned that I created an AR game for my classes to use to review the differences between the Federalists and Anti-Federalists in my history classroom. I wanted to set the scene for how it was used in my classroom and the results that I saw when we tried it in class:
Context Analysis:
The students in my history classroom had learned about the issues surrounding the ratification of the U.S. Constitution. We had covered the weaknesses of the Articles of the Constitution, the compromises that were made during the Constitutional Convention, and the arguments made by the Federalists and Anti-Federalists over the course of three weeks. As we began to prepare for our test over this time period, I realized that my students needed a different method of review over Federalists vs. Anti-Federalists.
During the teaching of the unit, we had presented the arguments through the analysis of the Federalist papers, a chart outline the major differences, and even matching games. While these were somewhat effective, we needed something that targeted their understanding of the key issues of the debate.
Design Process:
Since we do not have very much time and there are specific things that my students needed to learn, I settled on the Behaviorist Learning Theory. The immediate feedback for being wrong and the feedback for being correct would help us study quickly and efficiently. We will be reinforcing the depth of knowledge on the topic when we transition to looking at the original political parties (which are similar).
For this particular game, I would like the students to not only associate the person with the side of the argument they took as well as all the major arguments. With this in mind, the student initially must choose whether they are a Federalist or an Anti-Federalist. At that point they must correctly identify the arguments of that party, if they do not they must start over and try again.
Classroom Observations:
First of all, if you are using iPads for Metaverse, ensure that they have a good wifi connection. This seems simple, but I was having issues getting the game to load initially and it all came down to the iPad loosing signal right when the game was trying to load.
Once the game was downloaded and connected to the internet, the operation of the game was great. The students were able to grasp the point and purpose of the game without much clarification. The students spent a few minutes with it each and passed it to the next student. It reinforced whether the students knew the material or not. I used this as an opportunity to remind the students where they could go for more study materials should they need to in the future.
Overall, I believe Metaverse was a good option for this learning objective. The implementation was a bit frustrating at first (as it always is when implementing new technology in the classroom), but ended up providing good formative assessment data quickly.