“Ametros gamifies the process of learning for students and creates an opportunity to exercise their communication skills by interacting back and forth with the AI characters.”
Dianne Nubla, Lecturer, Professional Communication, The Creative School, Ryerson University
1. Tell us about yourself and your background.
My name is Dianne Nubla. I have been teaching at Ryerson since 2011. I teach professional communication courses, and my areas of specialty are adult education, technical communication, and visual design. My students are mainly undergraduates and working professionals. As an educator, my goal is to teach and empower my students to gain the skills they need to communicate their ideas for personal and professional development.
2. Tell us about the course you taught and the Ametros experience you used?
I have taught two courses with the Ametros experiential learning platform. The first course was CMM 313 (Organizational Report Writing) where students go through a case study which taught them the principles to write an extended report. Another course which uses the Ametros platform is our fully online CMN 279 (Introduction to Professional Communication) offering where we have embedded the Ametros experience within the course milestones. I helped create learning materials for both courses, and it’s been a great opportunity to see the students’ learning experience evolve over the years.
The goal of the Ametros platform is to provide the students with an opportunity to exercise their critical thinking, communication, and research skills by interacting with the content and characters. It gamifies the experience for students and creates a back-and-forth interaction which helps to maximize the effectiveness of their learning journey.
3. Did you receive any feedback from your students that you are able to share with us?
The student feedback is positive, and we found the experience to be quite successful with our online delivery models. A fully online course can sometimes be an isolating experience for students. With Ametros, even though the characters are AI-powered, students get to know and understand the personality of the characters and engage with them. Through this, students are able to build their own online community. Also, the platform’s support services are great as the Ametros team has always been responsive to our requests to update the system to meet the evolving curriculum needs.
4. What teaching tips would you share with other instructors?
If I were to offer one teaching tip, it would be to listen to the student feedback regarding the Ametros interaction points throughout the semester: let this lead you to assess how you can help. During the semester, you’ll notice trends in student inquiries, and oftentimes, a course-wide announcement with a Q&A portion will answer the main questions. I find that making these announcements greatly helps with reducing the amount of email inquiries, and provides the students with what they need to effectively focus on the interactions with the varying characters and engaging content.