I just read the result of an evaluation of Mondiso, which I found extremely interesting as this program is the fruit of a lot of hard work I did as a product manager at DELC during 2006 and 2007. In general users are happy with Mondiso and recommend a more extensive use of it in the future:
Det generelle indtryk af læremidlerne i en anvendelsesorienteret sammenhæng er at undervisere og
elever tager godt imod læremidlerne, de finder dem meget anvendelige og anbefaler mere brug af
dem i fremtiden.(p. 153)

Reading the evaluator’s description of how “my” app is structured, it’s qualities and downsides is a mixed experience. Of course I hate to hear about the bugs. I get this urge to open up the source files, track them down and fix them. I can’t do that – it’s out of my control, cause Mondiso is not really my app, and I am not longer employed by the company that owns it. Granted a lot of the bugs are caused by poor equipment in the schools – according to the evaluator. (And how where we to know that the schools would stick to Internet Explorer like die hard Microsoft fans ? ).

It really does warm my heart that the kids seems to love it:

They like the universe and its characters, they like the dialog, the “gamification” of their maths curriculum.
They like the self paced progress and the I-rule effect of the interface. They like the fact that they can compete with themselves and follow their own progress. Cool. That’s what we were hoping for.

 
image from presentation by Sebastian Deterding at slideshare.

Use and inteded use

As it is the material is not used in the way it was intended – as a standalone mathematics learning system with no need for additional resources. In part this comes down to a lot of external factors – logistics of getting to the computers, actual hardware, operating systems, and settings, teachers relative familiarity with IT and not knowing the full extend of the app and its features well enough. But it also has to do with the limitations of the media: some mathematics skills are learned in a social context, like verbal formulation of mathematical questions. Why use a computer for that which is best learned between people who are present in time and space? Most content in Mondiso is designed with the human-computer situation in mind. It’s up to the teachers to “redidact” as it is so wonderfully called in the report, ie by starting conversations with the students that take root in their interaction with the Mondiso universe. Creating collaborative and social environments is complicated and expensive. Well it’s not necessarily. It’s more a question of focus. Creating collaborative and social learning environments and cater for all the other requirements at the same time, is complicated and expensive.

Teacher’s role

Teachers like Mondiso too. They just don’t know what to do with themselves once the kids are “in the zone” of learning maths with Mondiso. Teachers dislike being degraded to mere technicians helping pupils with the login process, and the upgrading to a newer version of the Flash player. Which I can totally understand. They know maths, they want to teach it. But really, they need to step back and let the kids take of control their own learning process. Or rather step back and let the app take control (and why is this a bad thing? I know it sounds bad, but why ?). I ask because another point made in the report was that unilaterally work with the app would result in a guided process where the app leads and the pupils follow:

Ensidigt arbejde med læremidlet vil i de fleste tilfælde resultere i en guidet proces, hvor det er programmet, der leder, mens eleven så at sige følger med
(p. 161)

It’s true that the content is organized and the host character says stuff like: now you should do this and now you should do that. But this is just providing a flow that the pupil can choose to break, then click some other piece of content and follow another flow. With class room base teaching the teacher leads everybody and one is not supposed to suddenly get up. leave the room to find another class room to follow some other teachers flow. Thus, in my opinion the Mondiso experience is bound to be less guided, less controlled than the class room based learning experience.Maybe it’s me but I simply can’t imagine how to omit the flow of any information resource. You have to organize the content somehow, how can you present content without inherently organizing it ? I mean, even Googles search engine organizes websites before searching them and again before presenting them. Actually initially we proposed a random organization if content – thinking that a neutral organization would accommodate differences in learning styles. The client asked us to organize the content, they wanted a clear indication of the ideal route through the learning objects. At the same time we had to make sure the teachers could create alternative routes. Which we did. The teachers just haven’t had the guts, the time or the patience to try out that feature yet.

Getting back to the teachers new role: with such game like learning, teachers and the pupils are on the same level.  Teachers should use all that new time available to familiarize themselves with the app’s content and features. This will make them better at monitoring individual and overall progress of their class. Knowing the app as well or better than the pupils, will allow them to “redidact” the material – create custom routes through it, push certain learning objects to certain pupils.

Read the full report (it’s in Danish)