New at SETT 2006
Learning from Grand Theft Auto
At SETT 2006, 3MRT - the Dundee based learning software company - will be showing what they learned about educational software design from a systematic deconstruction of modern computer and console games.
CEO Euan MacKenzie explains, "After five years producing software to support study and revision, we had to face the fact that most people are ignoring; there is nothing about the current generation of software that makes pupils choose to use it when they aren't being told what to do by teachers and parents. Then we realised the solution lay so close to home. Dundee is a centre of excellence for the computer games industry, and they had already solved many of the problems we were grappling with - how to produce something that immediately grabs the user's attention, engages them, keeps them on task and motivates them to keep working to get better and better at something. That's exactly what we wanted our learning software to do!"
After putting together a team with production credits that include leading titles such as Grand Theft Auto and a multitude of pay-to-play games, 3MRT stripped away all the superficial layers in popular games - 3D graphics, characters, storyboard, etc - to expose the underlying structure that makes games so effective at what they do.
Then they used the same structure, production values and gameplay psychology as the foundation of their latest product; InQuizitor™.
A unique combination of tried and tested pedagogy and modern games design, InQuizitor is an environment for study and revision that is incredibly successful at engaging today's "digital natives".
Education Sales Manager Stewart Hutton picks up the story, "the really fascinating thing is that although the content couldn't be much further removed from the context of most computer or console games, because the underlying structure and the presentation are right, pupils become every bit as absorbed in InQuizitor as they do in their favourite games at home and they choose to repeat revision exercises to improve their scores just like they will repeat a game over and over again."
The company has adopted the phrase "stealth learning" to describe part of what's happening, as InQuizitor users' primary motivations are to level up or get on the high score table - but in the process they are learning key facts from the curriculum and building a foundation for teachers to build on in the classroom.
Flexibility is a key part of InQuizitor design, resulting in a content delivery platform for any subject or curriculum and for any age group that plays computer games. 3MRT has started the content ball rolling with an initial release of over forty Question Banks covering topics across a variety of Standard Grade subjects, but teachers can use the InQuizitor Editor to easily create their own content or modify the content they purchase. Discussions are also under way with 3rd party publishers to repurpose existing content as InQuizitor Question Banks and quizzes.
Stewart Hutton again, "teachers can take one set of content in the form of a Question Bank and produce any number of quizzes from it, each of them differentiated for a cohort of pupils or designed to help solve specific study or revision problems."
Teachers certainly seem to have grasped the flexibility of InQuizitor - constantly surprising the company with the creative ways they use it in the classroom. From end of topic tests and exam revision through to timed pop quizzes and frenetic team-based smartboard sessions, InQuizitor is successfully re-engaging the most reluctant learners and helping to make learning fun.
InQuizitor will be on Stand E33 at SETT 2006.
For further information, screenshots etc, please contact:
Stewart Hutton
Education Sales Manager
3MRT Ltd
0845 003 7550
stewart@3mrt.com
