The Learning Games
Start date: Sep 1, 2015,
End date: Aug 31, 2017
PROJECT
FINISHED
It is a key element of good teaching practice that the teacher will begin from the place on the learning path that the learner is currently at and then help the learner progress further along that path. In order to achieve this goal the teacher must try to use tools and techniques that best engage with the learner and indeed provide the motivation and intellectual stimulation that learners at all levels of study and ability require. Technological developments, particularly in the area of communications, have very much changed the way learners react to educational stimuli. Engagement with the internet and the consequent access to information, social contacts, online gaming and other tools have modified the ways in which people learn and interact. Our project proposes to develop a gamification system of educational delivery that taps into elements from the modern students real world experience and incorporate them into an integral framework that can be used to assess all kinds of learning (formal, primarily, but also informal and non-formal) within the classroom through the achievements the students make in their modules; a system that provides immediate and accessible feedback about performance and the level of mastery acquired and what needs to be learnt in order to progress; a system that improves teacher-student communication, and also student-student communication, a social dimension of learning, which is known to encourage deeper engagement with the activities. The overall objective is committing the students to change their attitude towards learning, increasing their motivation and consequently enabling them to achieve their full potential. All these game-imported elements encompass a need for the teachers to incorporate gamification as the base for class management, implying an effort to learn and master both the theoretical aspects of the framework and, on a more practical level, the use of the software for our everyday practice. The project seeks to develop innovative methodologies and accompanying tools to put these ideas into practice aiming at making our students engage more in their own learning processes, therefore improving not only subject-specific achievement levels but also transversal skills in every educational level and, in lower educational levels like secondary or second chance education for adults, also basic skills like literacy and numeracy. In order to achieve our goals specific software will be developed by the Application Development students from some of the partner institutions. Once that tool, a set of web-based and mobile applications for both teachers, students and parents is developed, the partners will undertake a simulated test of the tools in order to evaluate them and make the necessary changes. There are six institutions involved in the project, implying more than 60 mobilities in a cross-sectoral way. Each one has a significant degree of expertise in educational delivery. The participating institutions have expertise in training students with very different educational abilities and have worked in the past to develop strategies to motivate and assist students with learning difficulties while at the same time engage with more gifted students. The partners have worked on projects together in the past and a strong level of communication and sharing of educational ideas has existed between the partner institutes for close to ten years. While the primary focus of the project is at students studying in VET some partners also have experience in both secondary and tertiary education and it is our intention that the gamfication framework being developed will be flexible enough to work both within and outside of the VET context. The main result of the project will be a web-based html5 version of the software that any educational institution can install and use on their own computer network. This version will run on any mobile device with a browser. Other results will include, results relating to the use of the methodology in the class and also the products specifically created for the project, such as documentation and Internet presence. These will include a user manual, a quick user guide for the applications and also different booklets and leaflets that will be compiled and edited as supporting materials for the meetings, introducing different aspects of gamification, from theoretical background, the basic elements and techniques to gamify an activity and how to put it into practice using software and other classroom dynamics. In addition, the information about the software and its use and the other innovative methods developed through the project will be published from the online dissemination platforms of the project. Once the project is completed both the Intellectual Output (the software applications and user manual) and all the other related materials specifically designed and created to put gamification into practice will be made freely available online.