This project is for high school students that are in the Church Educational System for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. They range in age from 15 to 18 and voluntarily attend a Seminary class every weekday. Part of the curriculum regards learning about the history of the Book of Mormong. Thus, I am creating an interactive module that chronicles the history and major people in the Book of Mormon. Participants will be able to view re-enactments of these major events and people in video and text format. They will then have the opportunity to play a game that helps them to synthesize the information presented in the tutorial phase of the project.

Purpose:

The purpose of this software program is to teach high school seminary students about the history of the Book of Mormon.

Goals

• Understand how and when the various peoples of the Book of Mormon lived
• Understand who the major people from the Book of Mormon are
• Identify applicable lessons for their lives from learning about the lives of the people in the Book of Mormon
• Describe the peoples and history of the Book of Mormon

Objectives

• SWBAT demonstrate when the various peoples of the Book of Mormon lived
• SWBAT distinguish what relevance the lives of the people in the Book of Mormon has for their life
• SWBAT give an overview of the history of the Book of Mormon
• SWBAT describe what happened to the various peoples of the Book of Mormon

Learners who will participate in this program are high school students between the ages of 15 and 18. They all live in Northeast Georgia and are members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. They voluntarily attend an early morning religious class. The program will be used in conjunction with this class. The students typically well-motivated and highly involved in academics and extracurricular activities.

Participants will be able to take this module home on CD-Rom. There are four main parts to the lesson. First is a video that gives a two-minute overview of the history of the Book of Mormon. It explains how everything fits together and who lived when. Next is the main part of the instruction. It is an interactive timeline where the learners can click on certain historical persons and view a video about them and read their biography. This will assist learners in learning when key figures lived and what they did. The next section of the module is an interactive game. First, the learners will be asked questions about who did what and when. Next, they will be shown video and asked what concept or principle can be learned from it. Finally, the learners will be shown a video and asked questions about how it applies to them. The game will keep track of how many answers the learners get right. If they have a good score they will be compared to a righteous figure in the Book of Mormon. If their score is low, they will be compared to an unrighteous character in the book. The final section includes a promotional video that describes how to obtain a copy of the Book of Mormon.

The rationale for this project is that the history of the Book of Mormon often confuses people, but is essential to understanding the book. The interactive timeline and the overview video will help students to understand how things fit together, who lived when, and who did what. The game is designed to test students as to certain facts, then concepts and then practical application. This game provides a logical progression of testing students' comprehension. Combined, these strategies should provide a fun, compelling, interactive way for students to learn and apply principles from the Book of Mormon's history.

Profile of Learners

The formative evaluation of this program was conducted with 4 students who are part of the target learner audience. Two females and two males evaluated the program by participating in three of the modules in the program and completing an evaluation. The ages and characteristics of learners are presented in the table below.

Assessment

I observed all of the participants as they took part in the program. I looked for how they were interacting with the tutorial, and tried to detect any problems or obstacles that the learners were having. After participating in the program the learners were asked to fill out a likert-type survey regarding the following statements:

For each question, a Likert scale response was used, and learners were able to choose their response by circling choices ranging from 5 (Strongly Agree) to 1 (Strongly Disagree). The open-ended questions provided space for comments and suggestions. Each question was aimed at specific evaluation areas: usability, content, reading level, etc.

Procedures

On December 10, 2004, the four learners participated in the program and filled out the survey. It took place on the computer in my home.

The students were brought into my office one by one and I observed them navigating the program. They sat at the computer on my desk and I stood behind them and to the right, out of their line of sight. I noted any problems or difficulties that popped up as the students went through the program. Each student tried to ask me questions, but I did not answer them. After completing the program I gave the student the survey and left the office.

Results

Results from the survey are presented below. For each multiple choice question, an average score is presented, followed by discussion of the responses from the open-ended comments and questions.

Key:

The average scores indicate that the learners felt that the program was helpful overall, and the level was appropriate for their abilities and experience with this topic. It also seemed to effect the students' motivation to learn about the Book of Mormon.

During the observation of their navigation I noticed that the students seemed to skim the textual information presented in the timeline section. They also were quite attentive during the video aspects of the program. None of the learners used the help portions of the program and they didn't read the instructions. They figure things out through experimentation. I noticed that two of the students would click on home and then the timeline button rather than clicking on the timeline button that was provided. Also, they all tried to click enter on the Jeopardy game to answer the question.

Revision

Overall, this evaluation aided me in seeing where students were having difficulty, which aspects they liked and disliked, and practical considerations that I can add or change to make the program more effective. The students seemed to really enjoy the program and commented on how cool it was.