Internet Learning Volume 3, Number 2, Fall 2014 | Page 43

Internet Learning
process, something rarely possible when
working with a fetal pig in a lab (see Video
2). Note: Video contains graphic material.
In 2006, the then Dean of Fine Arts
at Miami University, Dr. Jose Bowen (author
of Teach Naked) came to me with a request
for an activity to support his popular Jazz
History course. His class was a face-to-face
course, and he was interested in developing
a teaching activity that facilitated the “inverted
classroom” approach. Prior to this
time, I was not familiar with the term, despite
the fact that my most effective learning
activities also effectively facilitated the process
of moving the content delivery out of
the classroom, to save time for more meaningful
activities during class.
The activity, Jazz by Ear, provided
the inspiration to SmashFact. This activity
was a learning game version of the popular
game “Name That Tune” tailored for Dr.
Bowen’s Jazz History students. The activity
was designed to teach students with no musical
ability or training, the skill of analyzing
jazz styles and famous pieces. The solution
saved both students and Dr. Bowen valuable
time. Students could study (play) at their
own pace, remediate where necessary, and
they knew that they were studying exactly
what the Dr. Bowen needed them to study.
Jazz by Ear’s level design spelled out what
the student needed to know and let them
practice as often as needed to prepare them
for the exam (see below).
Faculty could not possibly repurpose
these learning tools unless they had a
programmer on staff. Jazz by Ear was developed
in Adobe Flash and delivered to students
via browsers. Its reuse by other faculty
would require two things:
1. In order to use Jazz by Ear in another
jazz history class, faculty members
would need to align their courses with
the way the game levels were laid out according
to Dr. Bowen’s semester plan.
2. For faculty in other disciplines wishing
to repurpose the Jazz by Ear style
game, a Flash Developer would need to
sift through the code, make appropriate
changes and prepare media to be in the
proper format for delivery.
With these barriers, I determined
that a system was needed that could allow
faculty to create an activity that could
be customized for their curricula. I determined
that the interface needed to be simple
enough to be employed on smartphones and
to allow different types of content (audio,
images and text) to be used. Perhaps most
importantly, I decided it needed to offer a
method for faculty to get their course content
into the game without great effort.
In level 1, students learn instrument
recognition. Level 2 teaches the student to
listen for the most prominent or solo instrument.
Each subsequent level became progressively
more difficult, and was aligned
with Dr. Bowen’s curriculum. In order to
advance in the game, the current level had to
be mastered. Mastery was achieved by randomizing
the sounds in question, as well as
the answers on the screen. Each incorrectly
answered question was then returned to
the queue until it was answered correctly. By
level 32, students were asked to determine
the jazz style by listening to a particular artist.
Since I was the only instructional
technologist working for the university at
that time, planning for an activity to be reused
was critically important. By changing
the artwork and swapping the sound files,
I was able to reuse Jazz By Ear for another
Fine Arts faculty who taught phonetics.
This time, I developed a game that
associated each sound with the appropriate
symbol. The game was called “Phun with
Phonetics”.
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