Playing for the joy of learning

“I play, but you have to take me seriously.” Domokos Szilágyi 

During everyday life, adults, parents and even teachers consider playing and learning as mutually exclusive concepts. Many people believe that studying is a ‘serious’ activity or task, while playing is linked to the concept of leisure. 

However, the key to successful learning is motivation. One of the most important questions for teachers is to find a way to provide a teaching framework that fosters students’ motivation to learn. 

One of the themes of recent pedagogical research is the possibility of introducing gamification as a way to support learning. Games trigger mechanisms in human behaviour that induce a feeling of pleasure and motivate people to carry out a given activity. Gamification of learning means “borrowing” from games the mechanisms that trigger a positive, motivating feeling of inspiration, i.e. using game design elements in a non-playful context. 

There is also much talk these days about the loss of children’s ability to focus on something for a long period of time. Similar to the self-absorbed in playing is Mihály Csíkszentmihályi’s Theory of Flow. According to Csíkszentmihályi (2010), we can become so absorbed in a given activity (flow) that we do it for the sake of the action. In this case, not only does the performance increase, but the person’s state of consciousness also changes: it is reflected on the person themself, whose competences are improved, whose ability to focus is strengthen, and whose activity is enjoyable and not stressful. 

The Erasmus+ project EDUGRAAL brings together education professionals and teachers from six different countries (France, Belgium, Spain, Italy, Greece and Romania) to achieve a common goal: to redefine the use of homework to consolidate and deepen knowledge, but in a new and innovative way: by making it playful, by increasing motivation and by creating a sense of “flow” in the process of doing homework. 

The aim of the project is to create homework tasks that, based on the concept of computer adventure games, involve students in a created world where they solve different tasks as the story progresses to reach the final goal, obtaining the ‘treasure’ while practising the knowledge taught in class.  

However, Edugraal not only creates adventurous tasks, but also provides a way of training teachers and introducing them to the concept of gamification through an e-learning module.  The pedagogical toolbox needed for its implementation is also available to teachers on the website https://edugraal.eu, the result of a joint effort, which introduces the concepts of gamification and homework adventures in seven languages: English, French, Italian, Hungarian, Romanian, Greek and Spanish, and shares ready-to-use homework adventures as well. The homework activities are characterised by interesting adventures with an inter- and transdisciplinary approach, colourful graphic elements, which can be used in mathematics, biology, physics, chemistry, history and literature lessons. 

Students from the Kölcsey Ferenc Főgimnázium (in Romania) participated in testing the ready-made exercises, and their teachers also created homework adventure. The most credible reports came from the teachers, who invested a lot of time and effort in learning how to create adventurous, exploratory play-based homework for the children. Their experiences and opinions are quoted below:  

“We created playful, homework adventure tasks that confronted us with new challenges. Gamification as a method for homework is a new field and we concluded that it is worth the effort, as it complements the learning process, helps to practice and deepen knowledge.” (Teacher) 

“An interesting approach, pre-planning, a lot of creativity, even more time and, in good cases, teamwork, characterise this type of teaching method.” (Teacher) 

“The choice of topic should be adapted to the student’s interests, as this may make them more willing to tackle a series of tasks over several pages. The choice of exercises seemed to be the easiest, as they had to be related to the theoretical or practical material taught. However, creating a framework is very time-consuming and the vocabulary needs to be adapted to the age and primary knowledge of the child.” (Teacher) 

“The creation of the gamified homework was done in teams, together. The collaboration was really fun, not only challenging for us but also a real team-building exercise. Creative ideas were generated and the outline of the homework was quickly put together. It took a little more time to edit, correct and create the final version.” (Teacher) 

“It was a real challenge, I liked it.” (Student)

“Personally, I liked the challenges and the unexpected twists.” (Student) 

“I find the idea of embedding the tasks into a story really interesting.” (Student) 

Gamification, or gamified homework, is a remarkable method for all teachers who want to try new ways and are not afraid of challenges. 

Dear colleagues, let’s go on an adventure!