ThinkLocker has evolved significantly since one of our founders, Tom Gordon, while participating in a professional development workshop at Northwestern Michigan College (NMC) in 2015, read the book How We Learn by Benedict Carey. In the book, Carey describes using a learning system to classify paintings by type (impressionism, cubism, etc.). The system presented Carey with a painting, asked him to identify the type of painting, and then indicated if he was correct. The process was repeated many times and Carey’s accuracy steadily increased using no other information or feedback. Students using this same system were soon able to classify art at a rate of better than 80%. Carey also cites an example of flight students using a similar system to study images of gauges in a cockpit of a plane to make a flight assessment. The flight students passed a test at the same rate as pilots with 1,000 hours of flight time.
The success of this learning system intrigued Tom and he wondered if it could be used to help his students identify countries in his Geography course. Working with Mark DeLonge and the Educational Media Technology (EMT) Department at the college, they searched unsuccessfully for an online tool that would allow Tom to create his own Perceptual Learning Modules (PLM) for his Geography course. The team then contacted Jeff Straw in the Computer Information Technology Department who developed a proof of concept web application using HTML and JavaScript files.
The process to create each new PLM took weeks to complete. Tom would select the pictures, the EMT Department would resize and add arrows and/or circles to the maps and then Mark would hand code each module for the specific images and terms. The completed web application would then be packaged as a module and added to Tom's course in Moodle, the college’s course management system. While the success of this learning system was quickly apparent based on the success of Tom’s students, it was obvious that this process was not efficient or sustainable if other instructors wanted to create PLMs. An online tool that would allow instructors to create, manage, and distribute their own PLMs was necessary.
Returning to the CIT Department, Tom and Mark met with John Velis, an instructor who ran the capstone course for the CIT department. Graduating student teams would choose a project to develop for a third party over the course of a semester. Tom and Mark pitched their idea to the students and a team of four students chose their project. Using .NET and Agile Development techniques, the students develop an alpha prototype and with the help of Scott Goethals infrastructure students the web app was deployed and tested. Over the summer, four of the students stayed on to complete a beta application that was used by various instructors the following year.
Once deployed to the Internet, the web application began to gather a following with instructors at NMC and other colleges and universities. Over the next few years the web application acquired more than 60 modules and 200 regular users including NMC instructors, Harvard graduate students, and a Nursing instructor from Paris.
In 2022 our team applied and received a grant from the NMC Foundation and its Office of Possibilities Committee. The grant money was used to redevelop the web application to be more robust and responsive with additional features for instructors.including a course management dashboard with student reporting. The web application was rebranded as ThinkLocker and organized as an LLC.
The ThinkLocker Team continues to make improvements and add new features to improve the user experience. Upcoming features include audio files, a rating and commenting component, and access to social media.