Learning has to be fun
This project is under active development and not ready for production use.
You can follow our progress on GitHub and request an invite to be notified when Zoonk is ready to use.
Zoonk is an open-source platform for creating interactive courses. We're building it because we believe that learning should be fun and engaging - and we think interactive courses are one way to accomplish that.
Why does learning have to be fun?
Because it's more effective that way. When we have fun, our brain releases dopamine. This neurotransmitter is responsible for motivation and memory. This means our brain associates knowledge with pleasure, motivating us to keep learning new things and retaining that knowledge.
But learning isn't usually fun. 83% of students get bored in class. Their main reason for getting bored is that the material isn't interesting enough.
If the material isn't interesting, students don't see how that knowledge is going to be useful in their lives. This lack of engagement can cause them to drop out of school. This is a problem because education is the most effective way to reduce poverty and having people dropping out of school can deeply impact a country's economy.
Is this a problem for schools only?
No. Boring learning materials also impact businesses everywhere. Every company has tons of internal knowledge their employees need to learn. By making learning fun, they can be more motivated to learn it and easily retain that knowledge.
Plus, fun has a positive impact on employee engagement, creativity, and purpose - increasing employee retention and productivity. It's also important to make learning a part of everyday work.
Passive vs active learning
There are two main ways to learn: passively and actively. Passive learning is when you're just listening to someone talk or reading a book. Active learning is when you're doing something with the knowledge you're learning, like solving a problem or discussing it with your peers.
Active learning increases student performance, it helps with critical thinking, motivates students, and encourage collaboration. The table below shows the main differences between passive and active learning:
| Aspect | Passive Learning | Active Learning |
|---|---|---|
| Focus | Teacher-centered | Student-centered |
| Learner's Role | Absorb and retain information | Actively construct understanding |
| Engagement | Low to moderate | High |
| Examples | Lectures, reading textbooks, watching educational videos | Group projects, case studies, debates, simulations, interactive lessons |
| Retention | Lower | Higher |
| Critical Thinking | Limited | Enhanced |
| Motivation | Lower | Higher |
| Collaboration | Limited | Encouraged |
How does Zoonk improve that?
We're allowing you, your school or your company to create interactive courses that make learning more active and fun. Instead of only watching lessons, your students or employees will be able to interact with the content, making it more engaging and increasing their retention. It's a more hands-on approach.
We also use gamification techniques that encourage their engagement. But we focus our gamification strategy on motivation and collaboration. We avoid competition techniques such as leaderboards because we want our students to work together not compete against each other.
Creating interactive courses with Zoonk is easier than using passive learning techniques such as video lessons. You don't need to record videos or write long texts. You can create interactive lessons using our visual editor. It's super easy!
Plus, Zoonk is open-source. You can subscribe to our managed services and not worry about anything but you can also install it on your servers and you'll have the flexibility to manage everything yourself. Feel free to choose whatevers works best for you.