Challenge C: Substantive Post 1

One OER that I came across and am using recently is Unity Learn’s Education Pathways. Unity is a very popular fully fledged video game engine and the company has started to provide free educational resources to help people get into the game development industry. The educational material is free, self-paced and has tracks for coding, game development and media design. They also provide guided projects and challenges, which makes them an excellent example of an OER that combines technical skill building and active experiential learning.

Unity Pathways are designed to make students learn by solving problems. Each module is framed around creating something, like a game scene or a mini-game to learn how the Unity game engine works. This system encouraged active learning and followed Merrill’s First Principles where learners solve problems and apply the knowledge they learn immediately.

Unity’s multimedia design also uses Mayer’s principles. Each tutorial is organized into short, focused objectives. Each objective has text, video and sometimes images to support the learner. This reflects the segmenting and coherence principles and reduces the cognitive load. The use of videos alongside the text descriptions follows the modality principle and helps the learners understand how the content should look visually (for example, a 3D model) and how to do it correctly.

Lastly, I think Unity could improve on this OER by providing narrated explanations on all of their videos. If the videos were narrated, it would further reduce the learner’s cognitive load while processing the same information. They could also facilitate a system where learners could work on the same project together. This would help improve skills such as communication and teamwork, which is crucial to work in the game development industry.

Citations

Unity Technologies. (n.d.). Unity Essentials Pathway – Learn Game Development for Beginners. Unity Learn. https://learn.unity.com/pathway/unity-essentials