Peanut Butter and Jelly Tutorial
Description:
This tutorial was made to teach younger kids how to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. The goal was to provide a fun and engaging interface, catch the user’s attention, teach a skill, and promote further learning. The lesson is set up in a where it tests the user’s knowledge through a series of quiz questions. The user must answer the question correctly to be able to move on. The questions help teach new vocabulary as well as help promote step by step execution of a task. The user is also required to interact with interface in order to promote the action. This way the user learns the steps by acting them out instead of just being told what to do. Also, sounds are present to reinforce answers and behavior. The user is kept engaged and encouraged to finish the entire lesson by offering a surprise at the completion of the lesson.
Reason:
After searching a bit online, it was discovered that there really weren’t many computer based tutorials available for children. There are plenty of game sites but none of those were geared towards engaging kids in learning.
User Testing:
This application was tested by a variety of people ranging from the very young to the not so young! All users responded positively towards the experience. The older crowd found it entertaining and ‘fun to click through even though I already know how to make a PBJ sandwich.’ They enjoyed the interactivity and figuring out how to make it to the end. The younger audience found the interface enjoyable and amusing. It was reported that some younger users liked the wrong answer sound so much that they purposefully chose wrong answers just to hear the sound.
In the initial release of the application users were observed while interacting with the tutorial. It was noted where users tried to interact with the tutorial and adjustments were made to accommodate this. There were several areas where the user felt there should be something to interact with. For example, users were trying to click the knife to spread the pb and j. As a result, now the user is required to click the knife in order for the pb and j to be spread.
There was only one area where I received mixed feedback. Half of the people that tested the application thought the text went too slow and should be sped up. The other half thought the text went too fast and didn’t give them enough time to read it. These responses varied depending on the age of the user. The younger the user was the more they thought the text moved too fast. The only solution I’ve thought of for this would be to have a setting at the beginning of the game to pick how fast you wanted it to move. That kind of functionality has not been implemented at this point.
Further Education:
The future plans for this product are to provide several other modules to help teach children other ‘Do-It-Yourself’ skills. This way the child would feel more empowered and encouraged to learn.
Other improvements made:
-Fixed the issue of overlapping of result star badges so they no longer block each other.
-When you hit the 'play again' button the sound stops so there's no more overlapping.
