DriveApps Curriculum
The DriveApps Curriculum is and always will be evolving as new concepts emerge and metrics guide design. Fundamentally, here are the key elements of curriculum:
Foundational Elements: A full understanding that all driving instruction boils down to elements of physics, tactics, and cognition. Most lessons will focus on matters of physics or cognition, with tactics being a ubiquitous aspect of most or all of the lessons. DriveApps also sees cognition as the overwhelmingly most important aspect of driver education.
Teaching is Adaptive: As outlined in the "Unique Content" section, the delivery of knowledge is most effective if the delivery methods are adapted to the individual learner.
Learning is a Game: A revolution in learning has evolved via the use of video game concepts to teach. This has produced the term "gamification" as related to the gamification of knowledge. DriveApps.LIVE's curriculum takes this concept to a more pure level by starting with an actual game--a robust game--and then embedding learning content through the most innovative concepts of learning science. DriveApps.LIVE refers to this as the "knowledgification of Games".
Core Apps: Ten apps have been outlined and designed. Development to date includes foundational driving software, proprietary to DriveApps. The first nine apps focus on specific core elements of driving and driver knowledge, and the tenth app pulls everything together in a deep and fun simulation game:
Each of the first nine apps is broken down into mini-lessons. Important data and anecdotes will be provided as well as an explanation of each mini-lesson, but the primary activity in each mini-lesson is to "drive" virtually and experience things one would experience in real life.
All of the combined lessons and apps in total provide comprehensive training on all aspects of driving. Users are provided a fun gaming environment in which to learn, with competitive and scoring elements. Ongoing metrics are taken. Questions are asked. Thought and discussion are transparently fostered.
The tenth app pulls together, collectively, all of the first ten sets of lessons via a very robust driving game (proprietary to DriveApps) which can be the source of ongoing enjoyment and refresher education.
Further optional content is provided to specialized corporate and professional driver types, and optional hardware and software are offered to all users to enable more robust application of the core curriculum.
Foundational Elements: A full understanding that all driving instruction boils down to elements of physics, tactics, and cognition. Most lessons will focus on matters of physics or cognition, with tactics being a ubiquitous aspect of most or all of the lessons. DriveApps also sees cognition as the overwhelmingly most important aspect of driver education.
Teaching is Adaptive: As outlined in the "Unique Content" section, the delivery of knowledge is most effective if the delivery methods are adapted to the individual learner.
Learning is a Game: A revolution in learning has evolved via the use of video game concepts to teach. This has produced the term "gamification" as related to the gamification of knowledge. DriveApps.LIVE's curriculum takes this concept to a more pure level by starting with an actual game--a robust game--and then embedding learning content through the most innovative concepts of learning science. DriveApps.LIVE refers to this as the "knowledgification of Games".
Core Apps: Ten apps have been outlined and designed. Development to date includes foundational driving software, proprietary to DriveApps. The first nine apps focus on specific core elements of driving and driver knowledge, and the tenth app pulls everything together in a deep and fun simulation game:
- Commentary Driving: Commentary driving is a proven method of increasing the cognitive intelligence of drivers, especially new drivers. A certain amount of proper commentary driving--actual ongoing audible commentary of all pertinent observations while driving or via simulated driving--has been proven extremely effective in advancing a driver's overall cognitive skills and situational awareness equal to many years of driving experience.
- Abnormalities: New drivers lack a critical baseline for discerning what, in driving, is normal and what is abnormal. Key to situational awareness is this baseline from which abnormalities can be subconsciously processed.
- Distracted Driving: Every driver is aware that distracted driving is dangerous. Every driver has this concept enforced on them regularly from multiple sources. It is important to continue to enforce this fact, and also to clearly identify what constitutes distracted driving, why it is dangerous, and in what ways and to what degrees. However, while it's essential to understand the existence and effects of the disease, it's more essential to understand how to deal with the disease. The disease of distracted driving, simply, is incurable. Every driver is going to drive distracted, every day. The frequency and degree of distracted driving can be reduced. Drivers must learn when one can get away with distractions and when one is put at risk from distractions. And this gets down to situational awareness and dealing with known and unknown hazards.
- Scan Range: There are proper fundamentals as to what the driver's eyes should do on an ongoing basis. Drivers need to develop the proper subconscious habits for where and how to look forward, how to use mirrors, and how to be continually aware of their "driving bubble". Drivers must understand how to discern not only their driving bubble, but the driving bubble of all the vehicles around them, including what drivers can or will see and can or will not see. All of the possibilities must be processed in the subconscious. This must be taught consciously but habits must be developed subconsciously.
- Separation, Speed, and Braking Distance: Learners will experience the effects of too little separation from the vehicle ahead (tailgating) as well as speed differential. The physics and tactics of speed as it relates to braking distance will also be explored.
- Knuckleheads: Learners will be exposed to the various ways other drivers create potential hazards and be placed in situations where they will be able to experience the effects of "knucklehead" drivers.
- Special Conditions: Learners will be provided with various driving scenarios that present atypical conditions such as fog, rain, snow, ice, and darkness as well as be placed in particular driving scenarios where these conditions create particular hazards.
- Skid Control: Learners are provided the physics and tactics of dealing with skid situations including understeer and oversteer, rainy or icy roads, and hazard avoidance situations.
- Accident Avoidance: Specific scenarios will focus on a full range of situations where the learner must react properly in sudden hazard situations and subconsciously make the right decisions with respect to the vehicle's technology and capabilities.
- Comprehensive Driving Game: This tenth "app" will come in the form of a comprehensive, fun, and continually expanding driving game that provides a full range of environments, driving conditions, and driving challenges. It will pull together all of the lessons of the first nine apps via a game that can be played and enjoyed on an ongoing basis.
Each of the first nine apps is broken down into mini-lessons. Important data and anecdotes will be provided as well as an explanation of each mini-lesson, but the primary activity in each mini-lesson is to "drive" virtually and experience things one would experience in real life.
All of the combined lessons and apps in total provide comprehensive training on all aspects of driving. Users are provided a fun gaming environment in which to learn, with competitive and scoring elements. Ongoing metrics are taken. Questions are asked. Thought and discussion are transparently fostered.
The tenth app pulls together, collectively, all of the first ten sets of lessons via a very robust driving game (proprietary to DriveApps) which can be the source of ongoing enjoyment and refresher education.
Further optional content is provided to specialized corporate and professional driver types, and optional hardware and software are offered to all users to enable more robust application of the core curriculum.