Learning with Oppia

A few months ago I was introduced to an interesting site called Oppia, a name I assumed was a Greek word, but turns out to be… well, I’ll let Oppia tell you itself, because the site is all about interactive learning.  Oppia began as a Google 20 percent project, and now is run as an open-source learning platform, where you can create interactive learning projects, called explorations, or sample the explorations others have created.  It’s a good time to take a look, since they’ve just completed a major redesign of their learning interface

There have been a lot of attempts to make a general purpose tool for creating interactive learning going back to the PLATO system that I first saw in 1976, but Oppia is one of the best I’ve seen, precisely because it doesn’t try to be everything to everyone but rather does one kind of thing, and does that very well.  Oppia lets you construct lessons that require responses that range from text and numeric inputs to clicking on images or maps, lessons which then use hints and comments to lead a student through a series of choices that can be surprisingly open-ended.  For example some of their programming lessons require a user to enter the actual code to solve a problem, and respond with appropriate hints and suggestions when they get it wrong, or only partially right.  It’s remarkably close to having an online chat with a smart colleague who can lead you through a lesson on a wide variety of subjects.

And wide it is - Oppia’s categories include Art, Business, Engineering, Geography, Languages, Life Skills, Mathematics, Music, Psychology and many more.  It also has lessons in many languages.  Moreover, it does a good job - I found quite a few of the lessons to be both compelling and informative.  It’s a free, open source initiative, so contributors come from everywhere, but the material that’s available to the public is curated, and I found the quality level to be generally good - although there were a few linear essays masquerading as interactive lessons.  But of course when you have an open system you expect a range of contribution types.

I’m particularly interested in game-based learning, using the techniques that we game designers have found to be effective in making games both easy to understand and fun to play.  Oppia is not built primarily as a game platform, but has the basic tools necessary to make some interesting learning games, or to apply game principles to more standard lessons.  I tried creating my own lesson and found it simple and straightforward.  The Oppia platform itself can teach you what it is, and how to use it, making for a pleasantly self-referential learning experience.  There are also a wiki and other documentation for help.  I have some (very rusty) programming skills that were helpful in getting up to speed, but I expect that anyone with sufficient knowledge of the subject they have in mind, and some basic technical skills could manage.  To use it well, it’s more important to be a good teacher than a good coder.

If this sounds intriguing - or if you’d just like to brush up on your basic Spanish or logic - take a look!