<silence> Hello and welcome to the Moodle Podcast.

Hi everyone. I am Barnana Sarkar, and I'm a part of the marketing team here at Moodle hq. I am absolutely thrilled to be your host for today's episode, and please welcome with me our guest for the day, Willian Manu.Willian is a seasoned software solutions developer with over 14 years of experience specializing in web solutions. And he is also a PHP certified engineers, scrum master and leader of our community users group called Moodle , Brazil , and PHP Marano . Today we are going to delve into the concept of gamification with a very special focus on the World Bank's Project Evoke game. This award-winning educational initiative in Project-based learning game mechanics, graphic novel content and storytelling to captivate young learners and encourage them to tackle global issues while honing their 21st century skills. Hi, Willian , how are you? Could you tell us a bit about yourself and what you do ?

Okay, so I am a computer engineer. I have this graduation computer engineer in system analysis and development, especially on the web development. I already work at developing a lot of different platforms and tools, but I've passed on the Moodle platform and which I've been working with it over the last 14 or 15 years. I , during this time, I d evelop a lot of plugins f or moodle plugins of modules, 'course formats, a nd e specially f ilm related to the f ilm. I , I a m the developer of m ovie, m ovie f ilm, which is the most downloaded and t he most u se t hing on the moodle dot o rg s ite. So y eah, I've been working. I , I really l ike to w orking, not just developing, uh, plugins and delivering it f or the c ommunity, but I also like to work and be part of the communities. So also help to o rganize the moodle moot here in Brazil. I also like to organize some e vents here i n m y l ocal communities, like P HP, m y o wn, uh, Google Developer groups a nd, a nd, a nd, a nd t he other groups. So y eah, I really l ike this community e xistence, especially, especially, and this is why I really like to w ork with m oo dle i n, uh, I've been working w ith it as long I a m

At MoodleMoot Global, You spoke about the Evoke project and you shared some really interesting insights there. Could you maybe tell us a bit about the project? What was the concept behind it? And its integration with , um, storytelling and graphic novels ,

Uh , evoke project. It's an educational experience that use, its , uh, first the project based at learning. So users, they , the students on the platform, on the , on our courses are challenging to solve some local projects , uh, local problems. And we use this project basic learning , uh, methodologies. And inside the platform we use a lot of game mechanics trying to engage in the students, like rankings, coins , and leaderboards and , and a lot of things. We also use a lot of cool features to engage in my more rich content because we believe that we can have the best platform with the best theme , with the best appearance in the UI and WebEx , but at the end of the day, the content is the king. So if you don't have a good content, your students will be boring . Oh my God, this car is so boring. I do not finish this. And this is why we will use a lot of graphic novels to create our contents, and we deliver it by trying to use this storytelling to create this content. So yeah, as we have a , uh, our major con , our major public, it's young people, so we try to tell the same language of these people, these young people using these HQs or graphic models , this type of , uh, content. So yeah, it's really good projects.

That's really great. And it's really great to know that , uh, you try to engage the students as much as possible because I am a big fan of graphic novels, and I always found rere so much interesting because of that. And , uh, that being said, you know, when you, when you use that many engaging elements into, into giving knowledge to someone, into teaching something to someone, I would like to ask you that, how does the game actually encourage students to solve local community problems?

Yeah . We also developed some , um, interesting tools for the platform that's like a portfolio. It's a type of Moodle activities. And inside this portfolio, students need to post some the , the evolution of solving a local problem like the green economy, a local problem, for instance. And inside this portfolios need to posting the, the evolution as the students completed the activity in posting something and like the activity of each other's comment , specific grades and specific comments for the mentors, they received some gamification kinds . And during this , we also using not just the cards , but the concept of skills development. And during the, the activities, the students will develop some skills, and when the students finish some portfolio or some activities, they will receive some skill points. And this skill points will be used to deliver badges , to unlock new content, to receive more kinds . So we try to use and to develop it , uh, some, some tools, some new plugins to create this mechanism, not just for the gamification, but to , uh, develop these , the user skills using this, of course, to try to go, to finish the activities and which has the meaning or the objective to solve a local problem. So if users are , uh, living on a really poor situation, so, okay, let's try , uh, take a look on this problem here, like in sustainable systems , cities and how we can do achieve this. And these users will, will elaborate the , the , the solution over the activities. So yeah,

These badges and as well as the dashboard with avatars, how do these contribute to the students' motivation and learning?

Yeah. Uh , the avatars, the first, the idea as we create contents using , uh, graphic novels. So this , we have some avatars and where students can be a character, a person of the, the, of the , the history. So , uh, over the history , the , the students will receive some more coins , some will delivered . It will develop the , the skills, and they will unlock some avatars. So users are encouraged to finish the activities to unlock avatars and be part of the insert that they are, try to solve this local problem. We created this type of the , the avatars, and we developed a subsystem of the badges mood of the model badges systems. And I also created a, a proposal of the Moodle users association to maybe turn it a part of model car , for instance. Um , mood has predefined criteria to deliver badges for students. For instance, users who has receive this badge if they completed an activity or user dispatch if they completed the course . But we needed more than this, and Moodle has a really brilliant ecosystem of plugins, and we have sub plugins for activities comp , uh, restriction . So students , uh, access this activity and , and after a day or when completed an another activity . So we created and developed a subsistence to deliver badges based on extra criteria, not just the , the moodle criteria. For instance, users will receive a badge if they access the course , um, by five days in a row, or users will receive a badge if they develop a , a set of skills, users who receive a badge , if they , uh, receive an amount of coins . We are not just trying to give badges for students BA based on its , uh, evolution inside the course, but also use it as a micro certification tool . So if you student develop a specifically , uh, skill, for instance, they will , okay, we unlock this skill innovation , we unlock this skill technology. So we also, we are trying to explore more of these badges for various type of scenarios, not just give something for the students.

That's really great, and I found it very, very , um, encouraging that students can be characters in history. I want to know that, what kind of role do you think AI plays in character generation and interactive portfolio activities within Evoke?

It started to play with AI on the portfolios , uh, activity because what is the portfolio portfolios activity where the students can post something and on a timeline format, block format, mentor format, and , uh, we developer some interaction features inside the portfolios, like a user can , like a, a student post and the user can comment on the post, the mentors can comment and like, so we have, and something like a social network with a timeline of post and the , the , the students can like and comment in , in each other's publications. But we saw that some students never received a comment or was not encouraged to keep going in , in developing their work. So we first started to play with AI to answer these posts where we, they never given a feedback, so we started to play with it. We trained at the ai, we have this first successful case, this case of success, the ai, the our first AI comments on the students' entries inside the , the portfolios. And , but we go, go further , and we started to help the content created the , the , the guys who created the content to try to help them to generate more , uh, graphic novels, more hq , so creating more character scenarios, trying to deliver the, to create more content for the courses . And you have some , uh, funny cases inside of this because we , you ask a AI to characters with different perspectives, so in front and look into the , to look into the react , and we ask the AI to create a , a face is smiling the same character, but is smiling, and they created a total different <laugh> character. And so I said , oh , it seems that, that we are another person when we are happy. So , uh, we also created, we also use AI to use this correcting generation. And currently today we are working on the course content generation. The content, the course develop, the course creator will type and add some inputs, and then the AI will create the course with the content, the , the skills that we need to develop , uh, and the type of activities. So we are try , we , we are developing this tool to help us to create more courses or at least serve as basis to create our course and create the content and the think . So we are , yes, we are playing with AI in some different scenarios , not just in interactive users, but creating courses, create the content, and yeah, this is what we are working on. It,

It's really intriguing to see, I mean, to what extent we can push AI and how much we can explore its abilities. You talked about the coins and badges and how they act as micro certification. Could you provide more insights on the marketplace? Um, I mean, what kind of digital or physical products can students exchange their coins for in the marketplace?

I developed the first gamification plugin from moodle, which was , which was the , they gave me ranking the , the ranking block. So every time the the user is complete active , they have some coin , then I created a starboard , a ranking of the students. So I create , I get this idea. So I, and I evolved this not just for the idea of pacific coins and generate these scoreboards and hankins , but also what we can do with these points , with these coins. So at the time , on that time, I asked the people that, okay, let's create some competitions and give mark , give some gifts for the students , uh, who are on the top of the ing or things like that. The consolidation of this project , uh, it was made inside evoke. So inside the marketplace, these students can exchange the coins not just by , uh, physical products, like a bought a church , a notebook, but they can also exchange their coins by digital assets like a digital book or a one hour of mentor with the tutors. So if you have , uh, for instance, a hundred of coins, you can schedule a call with your mentor to make a call . So yeah, we have these two type of, of products, digital and, and physical products. The curiosity for the work , they , the people really like to schedule the calls with the inventors . So we , we saw that they spend a lot of coins in sometimes to , to talk to the mentors to help to solve the activities or receive some feedback or things like that. So yeah, we have various type of, of products and the users really like to, to spend the credit on that.

That's quite something. Honestly, if I had that kind of facility, I think I would've studied a lot more . But , uh, you already walked us through the process of creating these kind of successful plugins. What kind of challenges did you face while creating these plugins and how did you overcome them?

I have a mandatory , uh, principle in when I develop a plugin from Moodle, which is never changed the model car code every time. I, I, I have always take this as the first mandatory , uh, principle. And I think this is the main changer to create some, when we try to create some challenging plugin inside Moodle, we'll face some problems and of how we can do it, how can we extend the platforms or so for sometimes , and the platform has some hardcoded features like the badges . And so I think the ma the most challenging here is to create something without change . The Moodle core . When we are talking to the end client , to the final client, we try to explain, we try first to analyze the , the , the , the projects, the challenging, and then explain for them what is possible or not. But by experience over these years , uh, work with model , not not percent of the features it's possible to work to , to do using Moodle, just a small things may , uh, for some time we need to change the source code, but in the measure part of the , the , the time , uh, everything is possible to do with Moodle. To do this, we need to create the right plugin to the right thing . So this is why we need to explore the different types of plugins, modules, themes , lockout plugins, so course formats, depending on what we need to do, we need to create a right type of plugin. I already saw some, some person doing some mistakes when they try to implement something during the model because they are trying to create it using the wrong type of plugin. When we are working with model need to know the architecture, what the different type of plugins do, and how we can do your job using the right plugins. So yeah, I think the everything is possible to do when you are doing it right.

I really liked what you said that everything is possible with Moodle . That's very nice to hear. How do the customized course page features like progress tracking and avatars enhance the learning experience in Moodle?

When you are customizing a course, you need to do it using the right plug for the purpose. You are , you are want to and do , so for instance, to x to customize the card page , we need to create a course format plugin. So when we are to try to create a new type of innovative activity like the portfolio, I need to create a module plugin. So for every , uh, requirement, you need to use the right type of plugin. Regarding to the course page, I created a, a new course page plugin using some cool ideas like a section, have some sections, progress a nd subsections. So inside t he section t o have c hild sections. I think Moodle is working on this, o n the Moodle 4.4 or 4.5 new versions. But yeah, I implemented this feature of subsections t o deliver this a nd visual and cool experience for t he students. So, and the students access the car page , they saw the sections and subsections and the process of each one and how can access or what they need to do to complex something. So yeah, I created some , uh, discuss so much plug to customize the car page . And for things like the avatars, the coins, all the gamification features, I created a lockout plugin. And this lockout plugin, I use it Moodle callbacks to inject some codes in some parts of the model . For instance , uh, when we are creating a new activity inside the Moodle like a page or form you need to get to configure how many points the students will be, will receive , and they complete this activity to make it easier, I created a callback that inject the , this client configuration inside the act every activity. So you don't need to change the Moodle card and change all activities, all , uh, the forum , page segment and everything to add your gamification settings. You can use, you can do it using the Moodle callback , which is awesome. So as I said, you don't need to, you can do everything you want to if Moodle, if you are using the right things with the right , uh, type of plugins. I created a lot of other plugins like activity restrictions and , uh, and other type of plugins, but especially for these car seat features, for the gamification features in marketplace, I use it car format and local, in local plugins. And of course to improve the, the user interface, I customize it , the , to work together with the, all of these components.

Wow, that's really quite something. And uh, in the beginning you said that you are happy to be a part of the Moodle community. It brings me to my last question for the day. You know, Moodle has a vibrant community of users and developers. How does this collaborative ecosystem contribute to the continuous improvement and expansion of activities within the platform?

Yeah, Moodle has a really, really brilliant community, and I really like it not just the the Brazilian community, but the global community. So I'm part of some groups like, and the , the telegram group, the site groups , the forums. I really like to work incorporate in with my, my brothers, like I can say , like, I can say that and the community , uh, help us not just creating documentations, creating some explanation , uh, and giving us some feedback. So when we are having some troubles, we, we ask community and all every time, not just the groups community , but for instance the developers, community developer groups, every time anyone has some , uh, given us a hint to, to handle with our problems, and absolutely we are trying to, to deliver back this , this helps . So we are starting on ways to how we can deliver these programs with our portfolio working for and deliver it for the community. So we are talking with our project leader and we are discussing how can we develop this . So for instance, the batch sistance , I, I, I did a, a dis improvement in the Moodle users association, but so we already , um, thinking about then how we can deliver this for the community, if we, what is the best strategy if we , we , um, sent the , the code directive to be part of Moodle Car or if we just added the , the plugin for the Moodle . org plugins directory. So yeah, we are trying to, thinking ways on how we can , um, deliver back the this and improve data in and try to help to improve our community and improve, of course, the Moodle LMS.

Thank you so much, Willian, for your time and your very insightful conversation. It was really great having you with us today. And as for our listeners, if you haven't already checked out Willian's presentation about Evoke in Moodle , then please visit our YouTube channel to watch the complete presentation. You can follow us for more interesting case studies, insights, and exciting news on Apple Podcast, Spotify, Amazon music, and iTunes. Thank you once again for listening to us today. See you on our next episode.