Good Storytelling Part of Lesson Planning

[Chloet2]

Hello Sean and Vojta, 

What makes some Oppia lessons stand our more than others is the story that the lessons are built around. Some examples that combine good lesson planning with great storytelling are  "Le paysage rural et le paysage urbain" and "What are Fractions?". Both lessons have a hero that traverses the lesson, teaching important concepts along the way. The outcome? The student learns new concepts and finds the experience enjoyable. 

But there are only a few of these well-designed lessons on Oppia. 

Some lessons jump straight into quizzing the students whereas others start with the generic "This lesson will teach you XYZ concept." Though clear, the lesson introductions could be more captivating. 

It would be beneficial to have user guides that teaches creators how to organize skills in a lesson and how to fit the lesson around a story to make the explorations (regardless of the subject) more interactive and memorable. 

The user guide on organizing skills around a lesson could include:

• What are the main concepts that the exploration wants the students to remember? 
• What are some skills the students need to know beforehand and what are the new skills that the students will learn in order to achieve the final product?
• How to include real-world scenarios into the explorations? 
  

Another guide on creating a lesson that fits into a story could include: 

• What does a narrative arc look like and how could a lesson be built around it? 
• How could case study stories be broken down and analyzed for their problems and solutions? 
• If the exploration is part of a series, how could the story and characters be carried over into other explorations?

Having these user guides could help creators liven up their explorations even more. 

Let me know if any of these ideas could be improved on. I look forward to hearing any and all feedback. 

Thank you for your time, 

Chloe

[Sean Lip]

+Joe

Hi Chloe,

Thank you for the suggestions. You're absolutely right, and this is the direction we are planning to move towards with Oppia. The story-based mathematics lessons will soon be moved to a more prominent library as more of them come out, and we're going to be focusing more on creating lessons of these forms, as they have received very good feedback in trials with students. Part of our mission is to make what we learn from this process available to all lesson creators, which we hope will spur the development of great lessons in other subjects as well.

As an FYI, we have created a rudimentary guide on the process we have been using to create the Fractions and similar lessons (Negative Numbers is coming out soon!) but there is likely to be room for improvement. I just wanted to confirm that your thoughts are in line with how we're thinking about this, and in fact we are currently working on enhancements to the site so that this creation process becomes more of a norm. Here's the link:

    https://github.com/oppia/oppia/wiki/Lesson-Creation-Guide

Thanks,

Sean

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[Chloet2]

Hi Sean,

Thank you for quick reply! I just finished reading the "Lesson Creation Guide" and some of its corresponding sample documents. There's so much quality information on it! I am preparing my project proposal for Season of Docs 2019 and would like to suggest improvements to parts of the "Lesson Creation Guide" as part of my proposal. 

I wonder if parts of the "Lesson Creation Guide" such as the "Story Outline" could be made into an Oppia exploration, where the exploration acts as a tutorial and a host for the documentation? The GitHub page could be the static version of the guide and the exploration could be the interactive version of the guide? 

Thanks,

Chloe

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[Sean Lip]

Hi Chloe,

This is an idea that has come up before, but I suggest not going down that route. Oppia explorations are good for learning things where it is possible to incorporate meaningful exercises that allow the system to provide feedback -- interactivity is one of the biggest advantages of this modality. But for something like "how to create a story", I think that a more static resource would be appropriate.

I'm also copying Joe on this thread, since he coordinates the lesson creation program. You might want to try participating in (at least some part of) the lesson creation process in order to get a better idea of what the process is, otherwise it might be hard to write about it. If this is of interest, he can help get you started.

Thanks,

Sean

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[Andrea Bee]

Hello Sean and Vojta, 

Thank you both for responding so clearly to Chloe's e-mail, as it's provided me some clarification regarding how to apply to Oppia for Google Season of Docs. In order to be helpful to those others who are looking to apply, here is my understanding of what's needed. 

Among the Starter Projects listed here, we are to choose two (for example, "Guide about how to use the "translation tab" and "feedback tab" of the exploration editor effectively" AND "Guide about how to write good frontend tests") and submit the write-up to this group. Included with our write-up should be our final Project Proposal, written using this template. 

Am I correct in understand that these are the two components (Starter Projects x2 and Project Proposal) we need to submit for our application to be considered complete? Any clarification would be appreciated.

With thanks,

Andrea

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[Vojtěch Jelínek]

Hi Andrea,

you can pick one of the two starter projects to work on (I have edited the wiki page for Season of Docs to make it more clear), also the starter project is not strictly required, but is nice in order to see how will your work look like.

Thanks,

Vojta

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[Andrea Bee]

Dear Vojta,

Thank you very much. To restate, we can pick one of the two starter projects from any one category. I would like to do the Starter Project titled "Guide about how to use the "translation tab" and "feedback tab" of the exploration editor effectively." I have explored the Oppia website, completed several lessons (both popular and less popular ones), and I have read through the Gitter discussions. Do members of the public have access to the feedback tabs of lessons made by other Creators? I can see the statistics listed under each lesson (Rating, Views, Date Published), but is there more detailed information available to the public for each lesson? I am interested in statistics related to how many different ratings each lesson received, average time spent on the lesson, or whatever related statistics are available. Please feel free to direct me to information on how to do so if I have somehow missed it.

With thanks,

Andrea

[Andrea Bee]

Hi Vojta,

I found this on GitHub, and my assumption is that you'd like us to write about how to use the Feedback Tab in general terms. If possible, I would still like to be able to see two or three more examples of the results from various lessons to get a feel for what kinds of feedback are common across different styles of lessons, in order for my guide to be more specific and comprehensive. If that's not possible, I think I probably already know enough to get going on my application! Many thanks!

Andrea

[Sean Lip]

Hi Andrea,

Actually, let me suggest just focusing on the Translation tab instead. We are redesigning the Feedback/Stats tabs to make them more actionable, so I feel like if we write documentation for this now, it will soon be out of date. I've removed that section from the starter project bullet point.

Thanks!

Sean

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