I agree that Syntorial has better interactivity than many of the “explorables” that have become popular lately, and I agree that high interactivity is vital for maximizing learning.
As far as the actual implementation of Syntorial, beyond the fact that it succeeds at having high interactivity, I find that the user experience lacks flow, and I find it fairly unengaging—in particular the videos slow down the pace, and I would generally want to skip them, but often don’t because I worry about missing important information—which is something I hope to do better at in any software I may produce. I think the game Exapunks, while the system it teaches is a fictional system made up for the game, is a good example of a fairly high flow + high interactivity way of teaching skills.
I also think of the edutainment games I played as a kid, it’s hard for me to highlight which ones I think are particularly good, since I haven’t used them in a very long time, but I know they did a good job of using interactivity to force me to understand the concepts they taught. And I played them voluntarily, so they must have had at least decent flow.
I agree that Syntorial has better interactivity than many of the “explorables” that have become popular lately, and I agree that high interactivity is vital for maximizing learning.
As far as the actual implementation of Syntorial, beyond the fact that it succeeds at having high interactivity, I find that the user experience lacks flow, and I find it fairly unengaging—in particular the videos slow down the pace, and I would generally want to skip them, but often don’t because I worry about missing important information—which is something I hope to do better at in any software I may produce. I think the game Exapunks, while the system it teaches is a fictional system made up for the game, is a good example of a fairly high flow + high interactivity way of teaching skills.
I also think of the edutainment games I played as a kid, it’s hard for me to highlight which ones I think are particularly good, since I haven’t used them in a very long time, but I know they did a good job of using interactivity to force me to understand the concepts they taught. And I played them voluntarily, so they must have had at least decent flow.