Introduction
Novelitas is a project aiming to create Visual Novel-style digital lessons. I started working on lessons in 2023, and have produced about one hundred so far.
Background
Video lessons have played an important role in the development of e-learning.
However, I have three concerns about them.
1.Lack of Interactivity
It’s hard to include interactive components in video lessons, so they often lack interactivity. They tend to be passive-learning experiences, which raises questions about their effectiveness.
2.Limited Accessibility
Video lessons are data-heavy, requiring stable infrastructure and Wi-Fi. This means that some people in underserved regions such as Global South can’t access them.
3.Lack of Inclusivity
Video lessons often lack visible subtitles, and automated caption generation is not always accurate. As a result, deaf and hearing-impaired people may be not able to fully benefit from them.
Interactivity and Inclusivity in Visual Novel Lessons
I propose “Visual Novel Lessons” as a solution to these problems in video lessons.
A Visual Novel is a genre of video games, in which players read narrations and dialogs with characters and make choices.
Visual Novel Lessons are digital lessons in this format, designed to be interactive and inclusive.
This is our model 1, a text-only visual novel lesson. I created this in the assistance of ChatGPT.
The biggest feature in this model is a huge “dialog-box”.
This box is used as an area to show narration and dialogs with characters in visual novel video games.
In model 1, lesson scripts appear in this area with a typewriter animation.
This makes it highly accessible for deaf and hearing-impaired learners.
In this model, story progresses thorough players engagement, such as pressing buttons.
This is one of the interactive elements in the visual novel lessons, allowing users to progress through the lesson only after understanding each sentence.
At the end, quizzes appear to check the player’s understanding.
This interactivity is also difficult to implement in video lessons
We are also developing the model 2, which is a hybrid of texts and images.
This is closer to traditional visual novel style.
Accessibility in Visual Novel Lessons
Visual Novel Lessons are written in HTML, CSS, and JavaScript(plus some images).
Therefore, they are mainly composed of text, making them lightweight.
Our model 1 is 12-15KB for 5-minute lesson, which is extremely lightweight for an interactive digital lesson.
Video lessons typically range from tens to hundreds of megabytes, so visual novel lessons are thousands of times lighter.
Our model 2 gets heavier than model 1 but still about 450 KB.
Due to their extreme lightweight nature, Visual Novel Lessons can be accessible in underserved regions and situations.
In addition, Visual Novel Lessons can be easily updated.
Conclusion
It is likely that we will learn with AI in the near future.
Therefore, video lessons are becoming outdated and we need to move on to the next generation.
Visual Novel Lessons are highly compatible with AI because they are programmatically structured.
For instance, integrating a text-generative AI API in our Visual Novel Lesson code would create a “Visual Novel Lesson Generator“.
Thus, I believe Visual Novels could be the next standard of e-learning.
*This article’s grammar and phrasing were reviewed and improved with the assistance of ChatGPT.
Novelitas | Visual Novel × Education 