About
Imagine you’re in a lecture, and the professor asks a discussion question. The room is silent. Eventually, one person (who is one of the two to three people who participate regularly) raises their hand to answer. The professor asks if anyone wants to respond. The room is silent. Moments like these are things our team has observed frequently. So, we set out to determine: How can we improve these experiences? How can we make discussion fun?
out 10 papers. I reviewed several papers.
UCSD's Social Computing class asked students to create a social media technology that facilitated novel social interaction. To enhance student interactions in classes, my team created ParticiPET. ParticiPET is a virtual class pet that motivates students to contribute; when students answer questions in class, they feed their pet, and when they neglect to engage, it grows hungry and dies. ParticiPET is a fun way to motivate students to participate.
The Problem
We surveyed 37 college students to understand the issues that discourage student participation.
Isolation discourages interaction.
Respondents indicated that they generally feel isolated in bigger lecture settings, which makes them less likely to speak up in discussion settings. Additionally, they felt encouraged to participate in classes with open, inviting environments and when they felt welcomed by their professor or TA.
Currently used alternatives cause stress.
The iClicker is a commonly used participation method, in which students use remotes to answer multiple choice questions. Out of 35 who had used iClickers, 15 respondents felt that iClickers do increase engagement in class, but many mentioned that iClickers being attached to a grade caused them anxiety. Many of the “no” responses disliked the effect that the iClicker had on classrooms due to how it was utilized.
Attendance does not equal participation.
73% of the students regularly attended lectures. However, when asked about participation within these lectures, there was a steep drop off in willingness to engage with the class and/or their professor, with only about 21% stating that they often or always participate in lecture settings.
The Solution
We identified key issues to solve.
Motivation without grade-based incentives.
We wanted to motivate students to participate without grade-based incentives, which many students said caused stress. Thus, we decided to incorporate friendly competition into our game, with students competing to see whose pet could grow the fastest.
Creating connections between students.
Based on our research, an open, social environment encourages participation. Thus, we decided to make ParticiPET team-based, so that students felt supported and were working together to achieve a goal.
Role
I created and analyzed the surveys we used (both the initial survey and surveys after each prototyping session we conducted). Additionally, I contributed heavily to the ideation in all stages of the project. For example, I created a feature that allowed anonymous participation, and I came up with the scoring rules. I also contributed to the Figma mockups we created.
Prototype 1
In our first round of prototyping, we wanted to simulate our ParticiPET in a classroom discussion where students raise their hands and answer the questions to participate. Our main goal was to see if the pets would encourage more discussion.
We divided the class into two groups that competed against each other to see who could evolve their pet the fastest. We came up with 6 questions—some related to the class material and some with random topics—and gave them a 3 minute time period to answer each question. We used Google Sheets to simulate a screen that showed the two pets evolving. Each pet had 6 stages and would evolve at different threshold points. During the prototyping session we would manually increment the points and the Google Sheets would then change the pet image when their point total reached the threshold. Finally, at the end of the session, we had the class fill out a short survey asking about their experience.
We witnessed more participation, but unclear results.
In general, the class did participate more than normally seen in discussion. However, because our questions were varied, we were unable to determine if that was because of the pet or because the questions were just easier to answer. We noticed that one half of the class participated a lot more than the other, and the pet did not seem to encourage the quieter people in the class to answer. Instead, the people that normally speak up a lot in discussions continued to answer and were the main force behind their pet's evolutions.
This observation was also noted in the survey responses. While people were excited about the pets, stating how they enjoyed how “interactive” and “engaging” the pets were, there was a divided response on whether the virtual pet made them participate more. 8 out of 13 people said that they were more motivated to participate than usual.
Our responses showed that while the pets did encourage some to participate, they were already likely to have participated anyways. The prototype did not appeal to students who already struggled to participate, due to factors such as social anxiety. People also wanted more variety and interactivity with the pets and thought that the stages were too stagnant.
Prototype 2
After our initial prototyping session, we found that students still found it difficult to participate and relied heavily on other classmates to rack the points up on their behalf. We were disappointed that the pets weren’t as effective as we thought they’d be and decided that an emotional connection to the pet was needed to up the stakes. Thus, we added features that allowed for more interactivity between the users and pets, and other features that allowed students to participate without raising their hand.
We used the same general format as our previous prototyping session, although we made our questions more difficult to answer. This time, after we showed the question, we gave students 30 seconds to write down their answers anonymously on a Google JamBoard sticky note that we asked them to join before the prototype started. If all students in their group wrote on a sticky note, they were awarded an extra point for that round.
After, we gave them up to 2.5 minutes to answer the question and a new set of rules to follow. Each student can only receive a maximum of 1 point per question (although there is no penalty for speaking more than once). In this way, we could limit specific students from earning all the points and encourage others to gain points as well.
Another feature we added was a hunger bar. We wanted to find a way to put a healthy amount of pressure on the students to dig deep and answer questions. Every 30 seconds, if no students in a group participate in the discussion, their pet loses one out of five “hunger points.” When the pet loses its last hunger point, the team loses a point as well. However, when a team member participates, the hunger bar receives +1 hunger point if they already had 3+ hunger points, or +2 hunger points if they had fewer than 3 hunger points.
My teammates also upgraded the illustrations of the pets and added an image when the pets evolved. At the end of the session, we again had participants fill out a survey.
Both we and the students present witnessed an increase in participation.
After this prototyping session, we observed that a lot more students were participating in discussions; that sentiment was reflected in our survey results. 7 out of 7 of our respondents had participated anonymously, and 5 had participated by raising their hands. One respondent also noted that they participated more than usual because they “wanted to see what happens to the pet.” Additionally, our anonymous participation strategy was a success: 5 out of 7 students felt that this had made them more prepared to answer the question.
Notably, one feedback said that “the visuals were better looking than the first presentation."
Overall, the feedback was generally positive, and respondents found our pet helped by inciting healthy competition and visually representing people’s progress and growth. Many felt more connected to their peers (~43%), motivated more to participate (~86%), and emotionally connected to the pet (~86%) by the end of our session.
Future
Increase personalization and physical interaction with the product.
If we were to continue this project, we would add more personalized features. For example, teams would be able to decide on their pet’s features (like type/color). Adding a “playground” feature where students could witness their pet and pets from other discussion courses play could help in growing that emotional bond between student and pet.
We would also create a more interactive phone-based app that integrated the anonymous participation portion and allowed students to view and decide the above ideas. You can view a mockup to the right.
All in all, we are very happy with the potential that ParticiPET has demonstrated and hope, if taken further, it can foster stronger ties between peers and learned materials.