Learning Game for teaching Devanagari Conjuncts to Children


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Creator/Artist: Kalyani S Dhone

Category: Interaction Design

Document: P3 Project

Batch: 2013-2015

Source: India,   IDC IIT Bombay

Period:  2009-2018

Medium: Video mp4

Supervisor: Prof. Anirudha Joshi


Detailed Description

Lack of reading and writing is always a barrier in child’s education and it also affects child progress. The idea behind this is to make an attempt to come up with a ‘Learning Toy’ which can help children in learning Marathi conjuncts. The main objective is to make a child understand the formation of the conjunct with engagement and fun. User studies were conducted with teachers and children in BMC schools and it was found that conjuncts are mainly taught by rote learning where the basic concept of formation of conjuncts doesn't get clear in child’s head. In addition to that, spoken language influences the child’s reading habits. It gets more difficult when they come across the conjuncts having special form like ??????, ????. To solve this issue and understand the problem user studies were conducted in government schools where I tried to understand the current existing process of teaching and problems faced by children while reading and writing conjuncts. The studies were used to draw insights and observations, based on which different concepts were designed keeping the objectives and targeted user in mind. As a final outcome, I came up with a game where child will be given a set of puzzles in which conjuncts will be given. In a game child plays with cards and learn formation of conjuncts.The game mainly provides the knowledge about sequence of letters combined in given conjunct. Making a two player game makes the game play interesting and challenging for each player. The game play is designed as a open card game. So while playing child tries make his own pair of conjuncts but at the same time he tries to block the opponent. The game provides the learning as well as social dynamics among the players. The game was mainly divided into 6 different levels, based on the complexity and frequency of the conjuncts. Simpler conjuncts were integrated in first levels and difficult conjuncts were integrated in later stages. Physical (tangible) board game was made to understand the game play and learning effectiveness of product. Preliminary Evaluation was done on the board game with targeted users. Based on the user’s feedback digital prototype was developed. Digital prototype was developed to add interactivity to the game with the help of sound and visuals. Three levels of digital prototype was evaluated with children to evaluate learning where it was mainly focused on sequencing of letters in conjuncts, pronunciation and engagement.