Lumosity reclaim your brain, motivating learning site

The motivating learning website I visited is Lumosity.com, an interactive learning website that has content designed to help learners improve brain health and performance and learning activities that helps learners improve memory, speed, attention, flexibility and problems solving. Learners can sign-up for an accounts which offers three free sessions of basic training for memory attention and speed. With a paid account the learner has to courses, games, assessments, and brain profiles. Lumosity tells the learner that every brain needs a gym and presents opportunity to customize learning that meets the learners’ needs. The learner can sharpen memory, focus attention, reach peak performance and enhance creativity.

How the ARCS Model is Applied in the Lumosity Bird Watcher Game

Attention - Lumosity Bird Watcher Game for exercising attention in the brain uses some of the following techniques for gaining and sustaining attention including:

Perceptual Arousal: – What playing the bird watching game, a bird flashes very briefly in a certain location on the screen and at the same time a certain letter of the alphabet which is part of a bird’s name of the bird flashes also appears briefly. The learner clicks the screen to the location where the learner thinks the bird flashed on the screen and remember the character that flashed on the screen.

Inquiry Arousal: - Learner can choose a game that appeal to their interests. With the bird watcher game, learners are presented with a scenario to choose the correct characters that represent a bird’s name. These visual aids for choosing the correct characters methods are used to increase the learner participation.

Variability: Vary the layout and style throughout the bird watching games. After completing each game the learner is presented with a different background and a different bird scenario. After the learner has completed the bird watching scenario, a screen appears which allows the learner to guess the name of the bird to complete the game.

Relevance To establish Relevance the Lumosity Bird Watcher games appears to increase the learner’s motivation to learn by connecting and building bridges between what the learner currently knows and to succeed in the game that improves attention and move to games that improves memory and speed.

Goal Orientation: the Learner is presented with goals for achievement for improving the brain with basic training for attention, memory and speed. The learner is presented with the goal for successfully achieving points in the Bird Watcher before moving on to the next two basic training games for memory and speed.

Motive Matching: One of the learners motives for achieving success in the Bird Watcher game is to determine how well the learner’s brain will respond to success based on the effort they give to play the games.

Familiarity – The Lumosity Bird Watcher game ties learners’ previous knowledge of birds, and experience of spelling and recognizing birds.

Confidence- The learner is given the opportunity to succeed in interactive games for training the brain that starts with basic games for memory, speed and attention. The Lumosity Bird Watcher game is one of the basic training games that build the learner’s confidence on how well the brain responses to exercises for the attention aspects of the brain.

Learning requirements: Lumosity encourages learners to finish each of the games in each training session (i.e., memory, attention and speed) to maximize the effectiveness of your training program.

Success Opportunities: After completing each game, score cards are presented to build the students confidence and to show success in the games and offers course progress levels.

Personal Control: as a basic game, the Bird Watcher game can start with low-level difficulty that gives the learners a feeling of confidence in being successful in the game or start with a more difficult game as a paid subscriber.

Satisfaction: Lumosity gives feedback and reinforcement during the Bird Watcher game which appears to be used to provide learner satisfaction through a sense of achievement. Learners are given immediate visual feedback when they click the screen at the location where they believe the bird appeared. Positive reinforcement occurs when the learner clicks the correct location, because the learner is then given the opportunity to guess what letter from the alphabet appeared when the bird appeared. However, negative reinforcement occurs if the learner clicks the incorrect location, because then, the learner is presented with an error message and the learner is not given an opportunity to guess the letter. The learner is given an opportunity to appreciate the results to evaluate their success in the game.