The project undertaken by myself and my valued partner, teacher Michael LaBarre, for class TLT-467 is an interactive Scratch tutorial designed primarily for new users of all ages, titled "Using Scratch to Introduce Scratch: A Brief Overview of Block Coding" . Our priority for this project is to reduce confusion and help learners feel confident when they first start using Scratch, as the initial experience can be overwhelming for those who aren’t experienced with coding. The project aims to provide a basic foundation of understanding for users before they dive deeper into the platform. We intended it to be simple, direct, and effective, guiding users through each block category with interactive instruction. We want this instructional tool to support both students and educators in learning block coding.

I played a crucial role in the development of the interactive Scratch project. After reviewing LaBarre’s initial Scratch project following our brainstorm process under tight time duration, I provided feedback, noting that the robot sprite(deemed by LaBarre as Buzz) was appropriate but that the speed of playback needed to be solved, as it can distract learners from being too slow for their cognitive absorption. So we decided to make it interactive. My primary action was to remix LaBarre's Scratch project- a mechanical term coined from Scratch creators meaning to make a copy of a viewed project. Specifically, I proposed to split the "Nine Block” sprite into nine individual sprites to enable interactivity then to program the interaction to enable user clicks to interact with each block category. Following this was successful implementation that allowed the blocks to be interactive. Beyond direct coding work, I was also involved in the collaborative process by sharing ideas in a Google Doc, reviewing and adding comments to LaBarre's Google Slides presentation aforementioned, and initiating discussions about the project's publishing outside of class, such as the Summer Research Day Expo all while keeping devel opment notes on the process for creating interactive sprites.

Through this project, I have gained insight into various aspects of project-based learning and collaboration. Observing LaBarre's leadership qualities, specifically his ability to assess our strengths and skills in order to direct tasks which organically formed our roles, I recognized this as a valuable management skill essential for teachers to accommodate student learning. This experience highlighted the importance of such assessment in professional settings. My personal objective is to learn to collaborate with teachers in fashion of a competent(but new) instructional designer, aiming to absorb educators’ tendencies to work effectively on shared projects. Though unnatural at first to LaBarre, building a self-guided instructional tool is a project I have accomplished before, indicating an angle between our learning curves in instructional design approaches. I reflected my own experience with learning Scratch and the importance of documenting it for self-teaching purposes, even considering the use of an LLM as a "reporting agent" or "record keeper and journalist" for accelerated documentation suggesting my understanding of the value that reflection of practice and leverage of tools has for efficiency.

AI has unique qualities for this project’s development, particularly reflecting on its potential as a "reporting agent" or "record keeper and journalist" for documenting my experience with learning Scratch. While AI tools like ChatGPT generally helped us brainstorm ideas and improve the tone and pacing of the project's content, and Google's Gemini provided concise reports for what blocks to use for functions I inquired about, I specifically considered leveraging AI for streamlining my process into directives to train a Large Language Model (LLM). In fact, seeing that this writing is largely written with Google’s NotebookLM demonstrates my interest in using AI not just for content generation or feedback, but also for automating the documentation of his learning and development process. I also suggested to LaBarre that AI could handle the writing of reports while we would act as editors. Admittedly this could prove risky seeing that I have not attempted this scale of content generation before but I now can confirm that I am not wrong in my idea. This success lead me to be adamant about digitizing my work and notes in conversion to text objects to make them recognizable to AI tools. In parallel to the promotion of my perspective of artificial intelligence, I commented to LaBarre’s concern for Buzz’s appearance saying that a childlike robot for this project is an appropriate non-threatening symbol of technology, a thing to enable our future’s acceleration in education inspiring demand to be authentic and simple.

Unfortunately I did not have the opportunity for real world testing, however LaBarre considers our project highly practical for various educational settings.

Seeing that it is accessible by smartphones, tablets, and computers- mobile and stationary it is suitable for both virtual and physical classroom settings.

Scratch Foundation’s online network and software has insured our project can be shared, "remixed", and improved by others on Scratch’s Explore page, allowing us broader impact and collaborative enhancement beyond the initial creators.

Our learn-and-play style designed within the project teaches what is essentially HTML coding functions making it applicable to a variety of grade levels and settings, providing a foundational understanding of Scratch and coding.

We have addressed the initial overwhelming confusion new users are proven to face ensuring that users gain a basic understanding before attempting to create their own projects by design.

The development process was not without its difficulties:

• The initial draft gave students a "backseat" in the learning process prompting a review, play-test, and redesign which lead us to make it more interactive.
• The many options of blocks produces cognitive overload that we were challenged to overcome by balancing simplicity with effectiveness in the instructional content.
• Scratch does not allow real-time collaboration, necessitating manual "remixing" and sharing of files between team members which caused delay in collaboration. 
• Direct local editing of the custom .sprite3 file format outside Scratch was not possible causing slow down in production from necessary extra learning of the Scratch platform.
• For the plot of the project’s content and story, play-testing with a new user (I acting as a novice learner) was crucial and demonstrated how critical user feedback is, although initial time constraints made it difficult to schedule a dedicated play-test session.
• LaBarre expressed caution regarding the sizing of the robot sprite, its overall suitability, the pacing of text boxes, and the appropriateness of the backdrops, indicating ongoing design considerations.
• LaBarre also noted that building a self-guided instructional tool felt unnatural at first while there was some initial misunderstanding between us regarding the assessment of our relative experience prior to the project.

Despite the challenges, the project achieved several successes:

• The team made the crucial decision to make the project more interactive, allowing users to click through each block category, addressing the "backseat" issue of the initial prototype.
• Google's Gemini provided me concise reports on coding blocks that graced my learning and development experience allowing me to complete tasks timely as professed.
• The chosen robot sprite was deemed appropriate and contributive to the project theme.
• We effectively used Google’s productivity suite alongside text messaging for task management and reporting surprises, particularly Google Docs for sharing ideas and feedback in detail on development updates.
• We have opportunity to share their work with a wider community at the Summer Research Day Expo alongside sharing our project via Scratch aligning with project guidelines to contribute outside the classroom.
• Successful developments, such as interactive elements and timely task coordination, demonstrated our effective problem-solving and technical application.

Please view Using Scratch to Introduce Scratch here

This Scenario-Based Learning (ScBL) project, which I will title "Dr. Jane Goodall's Environmental Interview for Curious Students," aims to teach young students about the negative impacts of human activities on the physical environment and address discussed actions to enlighten ways to mitigate these impacts. The specific learning goal is to enable students to identify and explain issues such as pollution, deforestation, and climate change, and to discuss solutions that individuals, communities, and governments can undertake.

The core of the scenario is an interactive mock interview conducted by Dr. Jane Goodall, a renowned primatologist and conservationist. Being extensively studied within animal behavior and environmental protection, I chose her as an ideal figure to drive this project forward in inspiring students and learners alike with environmental safety. The interview begins with a unique welcome from an artificial representation of Dr. Jane presenting a whale who she then names every time the scenario starts. Students will then engage in a five question-and-response cycles, exploring concepts crucial to learning environmental stewardship.

The development of this ScBL project involved several iterative improvements from its initial conception to its current form. One significant enhancement was enriching the ScBL experience itself. This included refining Dr. Jane Goodall's role to clearly guide the students through the learning objectives. Originally I didn’t have her at all. I actually created this scenario be more of an abstract, possibly philosophical debate. I didn’t intend on the interview to be direct with proverbially acknowledged value but to be “felt” with honest questions that incite those to be open with their answers. But after class discussion I realized that I needed to be direct for the sake of experiencing this process thoroughly so I used AI to help me be more direct with my intentions. This is where Dr. Jane came in, not to replace the mystical whale entirely but to support with educational prestige and format.

Needing a new place to host it for the attention of viewers, I was practical seeking developmental support from what I learned shortly before from Scratch, a mod actually. This mod, Gandi IDE, allows interface with large language model OpenAI. Not only does it respond to prompts well but Gandi IDE’s development platform allows for custom setting for GPTs crediting my success in directing its behavior comprehensively. This made a significant difference comparing my previous errors where the GPT would start the scenario as directed but then allow itself to be steered off the instructional goal from onward Q&A cycling.

Visually, the project underwent substantial development. It involved remodeling the AI assistant to specifically represent Dr. Jane, complete with a pixelated game art image of her created using a ChatGPT prompt referencing a snapshot of pixelated game art from Gandi IDE. The scenario's background scene was also meticulously built, including the sky and clouds to ensure the enlightenment of a clear day, water, a pet whale with water effects to highlight its presence, and a ship deck in the foreground. A critical technical improvement addressed the challenge of the AI going off track from unrelated questions. This was fixed by using the update AI background info block to import my designed prompts into an AI Hub block, which now effectively controls Dr. Jane's behavior and keeps the conversation focused on the learning process.

A key improvement for user interaction is implementing video game mechanics for movement to draw more motivation, hopefully commitment, to conversation with Dr. Jane. Dr. Jane who does not fail to speak out the prompt on the first interaction and onwards within whatever context the user inputs. This enhances immersion for the learner.

This project directly integrates several important course ideas and demonstrates key learning theories. With focus on fundamental environmental science concepts the project walks users into the "triple bottom line," where they are brought interconnected economic, social, and environmental impacts of human actions, instructionally, their actions within context. The scenario follows with highlights specifying negative human impacts, such as pollution (land, air, light, water), deforestation, and climate change. The training files I used to teach my locally installed GPT(ChatRTX) these various types of pollution, human footprint, and wildfires, offered us a broad understanding of environmental challenges giving accurate and coherent answers which helped design my behavior prompts.

To finish the lesson, the scenario shares the importance of individual, community, and government actions in mitigating environmental damage; the role of individuals in becoming environmental heroes through their actions and inspiring positive change; and the significance of data collection and scientific contributions in increasing awareness and driving change. Again, all these concepts are presented without ignoring the context of the user which is nearly a clutch for drawing learner attention.

From an instructional design perspective, the project exemplifies several effective learning theories:

• Situated Learning, where learning occurs within an authentic context, as the mock interview mirrors real-world discussions about environmental issues.

• Situated Cognition, which posits that learning happens naturally within context, with the interactive Q&A format providing contextual activities for better retention and application of knowledge.

• Constructivism, allowing students to actively construct their own understanding by responding to questions, making decisions, and reflecting on their learning.

Dr. Jane Goodall's Environmental Interview for Curious Students holds significant potential. It is built using Gandi IDE, an in-browser game engine modded from MIT Scratch, which inherently offers collaborative features and accessibility for game creation. The ability to integrate AI like ChatGPT for personalized and intelligent interactions makes it highly adaptable for various learning styles and levels, allowing it to differentiate based on a student's age, interests, and prior knowledge. This makes the project practical for widespread educational use. For deployment, various free hosting options like GitHub can be utilized, further enhancing its practical application. The project's conversational nature makes it suitable for both individual online learners and potentially for group discussions facilitated by the AI.

However, certain aspects initially presented challenges that highlight potential impracticalities for direct client-side implementation. For instance, the difficulty of running a chatbot externally from ChatGPT's website in a personal HTML project was an early hurdle, requiring a more complex backend solution to securely handle API keys.

The experience of using AI, specifically ChatGPT, as a partner in this project was transformative. AI served as a creative collaborator, guiding the conceptualization of Dr. Jane Goodall's role and behavior within the scenario. It was instrumental in generating the detailed interactive prompt and phrasing the age-appropriate questions for the mock interview. Furthermore, AI proved invaluable in asset creation, successfully generating pixelated images of Dr. Jane and the background scenes based on visual references. My earlier challenge AI veering off-topic was directly addressed and fixed learning how extension AI Hub’s code blocks work. This aligns with insight given to me from my art college professor Gil Ashby, AI is like a smart car, it knows all the routes. But only we know where to go. While AI provides powerful capabilities, human direction is essential for achieving relevant educational and design goals. This project underscored the potential of AI not merely as a tool for automation but as an integral partner in developing complex, interactive learning experiences.

Hypothesis

Art History Heroes enhances cognitive engagement, morale for challenging task, and self-regulated learning. 

This project, a game designed to aid teachers to train their students in fundamental knowledge of art history, makes art periods and styles familiar. Choosing a mixed gamification approach I blend physical and digital elements i.e a physical board game along with integrated digital tools such as a screencast instructional video. Throughout half of the development process I could not help but compare the rich history of art to the limited parameters of this game- notably artist, date, and tile. To what extent does engagement with this project, through its combination of physical game mechanics and digitally-supported instructional and feedback components, influence students' cognitive engagement in absorbing fundamental art history knowledge? Specifically regarding their propensity to undertake challenging learning tasks and engage in self-regulated learning strategies?

Materials & Process

The game centers around a narrative where "Time is now chaotic and in need of restoration," and players, as "time masters," are sent on a quest to "uncover lost time and restore balance by revealing their 'art hero' (historical artist)". This is achieved by placing the correct work of art to a given historical event or scenario using cards. The game is a blend of cooperative and collaborative play, where players work together to restore time, even as they score on a centerpiece.

• Physical Game Compents
  Game Board
• Cards
• Centerpiece
• Dice
• Player Pieces
• Card Casings
• Sand Glass (Hourglass)

Digital Tools and Integrations

• Design Software
• Interactive Video Instructions
• AI Descriptors

Result

The development and playtesting of “Art History Heroes” provided valuable insights into its design, player experience, and educational potential. This qualitative analysis discusses these insights in the context of the game’s objectives and educational gamification principles. Initial prototyping and a focused playtest with a single participant, Karen, provided concrete data and qualitative feedback. After a significant amount of production- i.e. 2 hours cardstock cutting, 4 hours video/audio creation, and printing card counting 108- a three-hour playtest with Karen provided insights into player experience and game mechanics. I learned that Karen found the game engaging and enjoyable, particularly the AI card descriptors. However, she suggested improvements in difficulty levels, chance, and clarity of game components. I have noted the need for more variety in artwork and suggested using software to improve instructional quality.

Conclusion

Art History Heroes is an educational game for high school and college students. The game aims to help students learn art history by placing art pieces in their correct historical context. The game effectively incorporates several key engaging elements of gamification.

• Challenge: The narrative brings urgency in the group mission to restore time.
• Story Narrative: The overarching story of uncovering lost time and revealing "art heroes" provides a rich context that encourages recall and retention of facts.
• Incentives: inclusion of scoring mechanisms on the centerpiece, and the ultimate goal of revealing an "art hero" at the top level
• Cooperative Play: The design emphasizes cooperative and collaborative play, allowing players to work together towards the common goal of restoring time. This aligns with findings that gamification can have positive effects on collaborative learning and peer interaction.
• Mixed Gamification Approach: By combining physical game components (board, cards, centerpiece, dice) with digital instructional elements (interactive video/audio instructions, AI descriptors), "Art History Heroes" adopts a mixed gamification strategy. Research indicates that mixed gamification can be more effective in improving cognitive engagement compared to purely non-digital approaches, largely due to timely and accurate feedback from digital elements like leaderboards.