My student signs on but doesn’t get taken to the map (/play/dungeon) - she sees a list of tasks. When I log on to the vagrant/dev version, I see the map. Is there a different view based on account type? How can I get her to the map without typing in at the address bar? She saw that I can see the map and it is more interesting and makes more sense to her than a list of tasks.
She can see her “course” item listing, a link to the arena, but no map or icon that implies map.
At this time there is no map for the Classroom version of CodeCombat and no way for Student Accounts to access the map.
We are planning on introducing a new map (and additional game elements) to the Classroom version of CodeCombat but I cannot offer you a specific ETA at this time.
Hi, when my student goes to /play/dungeon she sees the map and it correctly reflects her progress – and more importantly shows her what she is missing. She would rather look at the map.
Can it be as easy as a link on the listing page? There aren’t any permissions issues as she already sees it.
The Classroom product is designed and optimized to be as streamlined as possible. The order of the levels has been altered slightly, and extraneous levels and RPG elements have been removed. While the early Dungeon may match the Intro course, they start to diverge further down the line.
We wouldn’t want to link students in the classroom to the /play/dungeon, however we do see the engagement potential of these campaign maps and items, so we’re exploring a parallel version of these features. We’re still planning what it should look like.
Hi Serg, thanks for explaining the products. I’ve used so many curriculums for the kids, I just made assumptions about what coco had.
What is the issue with students getting extraneous levels or RPG elements? Is this something students could earn time toward using? Or a feature each teacher could turn on/off for ‘holiday’ type school days where getting progress out of the kids would be difficult anyways.
As a teacher on other online school work, I can usually see when they are misusing time. Khan Academy has a nice indicator for focus. And most of these online curriculums have something along the lines of how long it takes someone to accomplish the task versus just letting the browser sit open and daydreaming their time away. Not that my kids do that, but they do tend to avoid the more challenging work and then say there are no more levels/tasks/whatever.
We initially wanted to create a nice clean product for teachers to use in their classrooms. We didn’t want the distractions of the campaign map or “experience” or items getting in the way of that. Even after removing those aspects, the game is still VERY engaging in the classroom.
Buuuut, sometimes students stumble upon the “Home” product of CodeCombat and start requesting those aspects in the classroom, and some teachers also see the potential in the game-elements and request it as well. So, now, we’re putting these plans into motion. We don’t feel the current implementation is the best, and hopefully the Classroom version of the “game elements” are V2.0, an improvement on what the Home version does right and fix the concerns we had with implementing it.
Hopefully we can balance the learning, educational part, and the gaming, distracting part to get students excited for Computer Science and to learn on their own (even though they don’t know they’re learning.)
If you have any feedback for the Teacher Dashboard, or want to share what you think other platforms do right, let us know! I’m on Slack, or a forum post is fine too!