Music venue treasure hunt trial

Music venue treasure hunt trial

Yesterday two of us met with students from the Victoria University VET music performance program for the music mobile trial. This treasure hunt took the students on a tour of Melbourne music venues in the CBD, ranging from the Palace in Bourke St to the Cherry Bar in ACDC Lane.

This trial did not use GPS because of the difficulty of getting GPS to work well in the CBD. Instead the screens gave students directions to the next venue on the phone (and we also gave them a photocopy of the map below). Once arriving at the venue, the system asked the students between 2-4 questions per venue, and also asked them to take a photo of the venue. At the end, the system presented the group with a pie chart showing the percentage of right and wrong questions. There were no time delays for getting questions wrong - we were conscious of not turning this into a race given the potential dangers of the CBD streets.

Originally we had planned to undertake OH&S and PA/technical audits inside the venues, but then the music staff realised that this would have taken a lot of advance planning to organise, given that many venues are closed during the day (and also given that the program manager was on leave during the prep time and the rest of the staff were stretched for time). Instead, they created questions to be answered from the street outside the venue. Our team then tested the questions the day before and further honed them - this was a good move because quite a few questions still could not be answered by students in their original form (eg 'does the venue have an in-house piano?'

On the day we all met at the Arts Centre. There were 12 students present - three groups of four each. After some instructions from us, the students were given their paper based maps (as seen below) and devices preloaded with the login page. (they chose two iPads and one iPhone...these are maybe seen as sexier? More motivating? More familiar?). They were very keen to get started.

Students were then asked to enter their student IDs but told they could also use their names. We soon discovered the system had not been designed to handle spaces between names. The issue was quickly bypassed by using first names or concatenating both names, and then we were off.

The system was configured so that every group started with the Arts Centre questions (they had been given a tour prior to meeting us). After this initial question set, each group was assigned to a different circuit around the city to minimise the likelihood of groups turning up the venues in a mass, swapping notes, students tagging along uninvolved etc. The venues were arranged in an approximate loop (see map), with groups starting at different points on that loop.

The groups then set out on their journeys. The two of us selected a group each to tag along with and we shot some footage of students answering questions along the way using Flip cameras. One of the groups was temporarily stalled due to connection issues which we would find out later were to haunt them through the entire course of the journey.

One of us comments: the first location was an easy one since we were already there, we simply needed to take the elevator down stairs and snap a photo of the stage door before we could proceed with the next questions. The group of students whose party I had joined were very eager to take photos of one and other which I found rather humorous to say the least. It was great to see them so excited about doing an assignment and having FUN!

The students received instant feedback on how they were doing and were eager to answer questions correctly. Questions were either yes/no (see above) or multiple choice (see below)

At the end, students received a chart of results:

One of us comments: The feeling I received from the students was that they really enjoyed participating in the trial. They liked using the technology and found it a great way to discover venues in Melbourne that were tucked away and would have otherwise gone unexplored.

The other of us comments: Similarly, students were motivated by the technology and by the location-based treasure hunt idea. As performance students many said they found it useful to encounter potential workplaces that they hadn't known existed. Group dynamics in a group of 4 worked well, with students keen to discuss potential answers. They cared about getting the right answers, and were keen to see their score at the end (note - the group that had technical difficulties stuck around afterwards when we met up to complete the trial questions - without having gone to all the venues - so they could find out their score). The negatives expressed by the group were that some questions could have been a little more challenging and relevant (they also mentioned that they would have liked to have seen inside the venues), the course was long (two hours of solid walking) and some interface elements could be improved (options being too close together leading to the wrong one being pressed...this was on the iPad... and no back button).

The group with technical issues had the iPhone. They were troubled by connection issues that haunted them the entire leg of the journey. This shows that the iPads are more effective in such locations, possibly due to larger antennas and receptors (this was also the case with the GPS for the last trial). One of us briefly tested the Android phone and this was worst of all.

The system is designed to continue from where the connection drops off, but for this group it kept restarting the assessment from the beginning. We think that this is due to one or more students entering their names differently (even one character) to the original logins, so that the system didn't recognise this as continuing the previous session. Surprisingly these students were extremely keen to stay back and finish the assessment to find out what all the answers were.

In summary:

- engagement levels were high due to the technology and the location-based treasure hunt elements

- discovery element of venues was stated as being useful for their careers

- questions need to be meaningful and tested thoroughly. If not, it's frustrating.

- we need to make sure everyone types in the same thing every time when resuming sessions (maybe stick to student ids next time?, not names?)

- iPads work better than iPhones and much better than Android phones for constant connectivity in the CBD. They're also better in a group because everyone can see the screen and debate/compare notes