Yacapaca

If your students tend to act before they think, you will love the way we have just upgraded the very core of Yacapaca. The quiz template now has ‘flow state’ management.

The problem:

Instead of thinking the question through, weaker students, especially, click on the first option that attracts their attention. Result: an opportunity for learning is lost.

the solution:

We have added a gamification feature to to reward students for going at a measured pace – the elusive “flow state”. Students who want to win points, badges and level-ups (that’s most of them!) will train themselves to use the time available for each question.

None of this affects the summative score that the teacher sees. That is based only on answers, and is completely time-independent.

How does it work?

Students already earn motivation points for every question they get right. It’s a great motivator. Now, they get more points if they use at least half the time allowed for each question. To help them visualise this, there’s a brand new timer across the bottom of the screen, where it’s always in the student’s peripheral vision. The timer changes colour to indicate the maximum points available. In our tests, students quickly built an intuition and were able to significantly improve their time management.

This system gently encourages students to get into flow by finding their optimum speed, without trying to enforce it. In the background, the timing algorithm is learning what’s best for each individual student, and adjusting the parameters accordingly.

What you need to do

Please make your students aware of the change at the start of their next session. Earning points by slowing down is the opposite of what they have learned from shoot-em-up computer games, so they will experience some initial confusion of not forewarned .