Fantasy-based Learning on the Web--- Tong Pak Fu and Chou Heung: the Probabilistic Fantasy

Fantasy-based learning is a kind of situated learning paradigm in which students learn by solving problems embedded in a near-real situation. Fantasy-based learning employs further interesting story plots from fantasies and/or folklores as the background situation to motivate students to participate in learning activities. It is believed that such paradigm has on one hand, the advantages of helping students to learn in an authentic situation, and on the other, the provision of interesting story episodes as a stimulating agent for less initiated students. This paper reports how a learning system based on a well-known Chinese folklore called “Tong Pak Fu and Chou Heung” was developed, and its effects on learning the statistics topic “probability” of 450 Hong Kong secondary school students when compared with 3 teacher-guided methods. Results show that the learning system is as effective as the other methods and that the students prefer using this system to learn. Consider that there was no guidance on the subject matters given to the students who learned through this system, while the others were guided by experienced teachers, the results were considered as an encouragement for further improvement and future developments to cover more topics. Authors (*: contact author) Names Affiliation Postal address Email address Phone Fax *Fong-Lok Lee The Chinese University of Hong Kong Faculty of Education, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shatin, N.T., Hong Kong [email protected]. hk 85226096977 85226035622 Jimmy Ho-Man Lee The Chinese University of Hong Kong Department of Computer Science and Engineering, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shatin, N.T., Hong Kong [email protected] du.hk Tai-Shing Lau The Chinese University of Hong Kong Department of Statistics, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shatin, N.T., Hong Kong [email protected] .cuhk.edu.hk Fantasy-based Learning on the Web--Tong Pak Fu and Chou Heung: the Probabilistic Fantasy”