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by Cedar Leithead (Instructional Designer) and Naomi Go (Project Manager, eLearning Specialist) from the Teaching & Learning Centre
In late 2021, eCampusOntario released a call for submissions for the second round of the Virtual Learning Strategy (VLS) funding, as part of the Government of Ontario’s Virtual Learning Strategy. This second round of VLS funding looked specifically to support the development and design of high-quality virtual learning materials, assessments, and wrap-around supports.
Seneca’s Teaching & Learning Centre partnered with the academic integrity office of Toronto Metropolitan University (formerly Ryerson University) and submitted a proposal to create gamified academic integrity tutorials. The team’s proposal successfully secured funding from eCampusOntario, and in late June, the team met to discuss their journey into cyberspace.
The core seven-member team consisted of two academic integrity SMEs and a developer from TMU (Allyson Miller, Kasha Visutskie, Igor Karasyov), as well as an instructional designer and project manager from Seneca (Cedar Leithead and Naomi Go), and two academic integrity consultants representing the two institutions (John Paul Foxe and Amy Lin). The team collaboratively created a game that is intended to be used as a risk-free way for students to engage with realistic academic integrity situations that can come up in their online or hybrid courses. Playing the game will help them understand what constitutes an academic integrity violation and help them avoid these in the future.
The game was designed to create an approachable, engaging environment for students to tackle the often emotionally and ethically fraught situations that lead to compromising academic integrity. The game’s cute and fun aesthetic, as well as the space setting, help create an environment that students can engage with and enjoy while dealing with these situations, as well as allowing the scenarios to avoid parallels to specific people or groups. The tool contains three modules, or planets; these planets, which make up the Akadema Galaxy, each represent a specific area of academic integrity. Planet 1, Colaborea, focuses on collaboration and communication challenges. Planet 2, the Archive of Bosh, takes students through scenarios involving issues of sourcing and research. Finally, Planet 3, Cheel, gives students the opportunity to explore situations that involve stress management and decision making.
Figure 1: The 3 planets in the Academic Integrity in Cyberspace game.
Once a student enters a planet, they will start interacting with the various alien characters on that planet who will ask for advice or present situations for students to respond to. These conversations can be 1:1 interactions with other space aliens or a multi-character chat. The chat interface was a brand-new tool created for this game, as the team recognized that students would use chat functions to communicate with classmates about assignments and group work. Awaiting students at the end of each planet was a Boss character, Captain Corruptus, who would give them one final chance to save the galaxy, if they answered the last question correctly.
Figure 2: One of the 1:1 interactions with a character in Planet 1.
Figure 3: An example of the space chat interface. To adhere to accessibility guidelines, users can select the Continue button to trigger the next speech bubble.
With the help and support of additional team members from both Seneca and TMU, we were able to submit the game on time, and without issue. Additionally, we have been accepted to three conferences in Canada and the UK to present the game design and methodology. A big thank you for the support for this project, and we hope you take a trip to the Akadema Galaxy some time soon!
Image sources: Academic Integrity in Cyberspace, 2023
Teaching & Learning Day Spring 2023 is happening on Tuesday, May 2 at Newnham Campus. The theme of our event is “Pathway to Curriculum Integration.” Join us for a day of reflection and dialogue about the curriculum integration project. Our keynote speaker in the morning is Kevin Lamoureux (University of Winnipeg). Afterwards, engage with expert panelists who will speak about their knowledge and experience in the areas of Truth & Reconciliation (TRC), Equity, Diversity & Inclusion (EDI), and Sustainability.
Register now in MyPD.
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