“I Know I Have Done This in School, but This is More fun!” The Development of the Motivating Learning Application, The World of Carl

Abstract

This paper describes and reflects upon the development process of the learning application The World of Carl intended for smartphones and tablets. The application was developed by Ordbogen.com together with three public schools aimed at first to third graders. The goal was to design a versatile app that motivated training and repetition of language skills. The overarching idea was to place the learner in the mindset of a player playing a game while solving tasks directly and openly associated with curriculum. The theoretical backdrop is inspired by Vygotsky’s concept of scaffolding, Bateson’s logical categories, Csikszentmihalyi’s ideas about flow including the concept of gamification as a design framework for tying together activity and rewards including possibilities for exploration, replayability and completion. The development approach used the scrum framework to organize the agile iterative process, cycling through several loops of idea generation, player test, evaluation, re-design, idea generation, etc. The application was playtested on 60+ users between 6 and 10 years. All reactions, suggestions and thoughts were seamlessly considered and taken into consideration in the continued development process. The key findings underscored the initial assumption and design goal that it is indeed possible to create an application consisting of motivating exercises done by carefully and well-thought-out content scaffolding and recombination of peripheral knowledge in order to support and enhance existing skills, knowledge and competences.