Abstract:

This research was carried out in response to the feedback provided by students learning advanced-level Spanish at an open and distance university. Students’ satisfaction surveys had indicated that students would like to have more opportunities for interaction with peers and as well as more opportunities for oral practice.

The project team included two students and four teachers. We set to investigate the suitability of a playful approach for an audience of open and distance learning students. The aim of the project was to design learning activities that met those needs. We followed the principles of playful learning (Whitton 2014, 2018; Whitton & Moseley 2018) and, for the design of forum activities, the E-titivities framework proposed by Salmon (https://www.gillysalmon.com/e-tivities.html).

From the literature, it follows that playfulness can foster an environment that is creative, engaging and where failure is acceptable and participants are able to learn from their own mistakes (see overview and case studies in Whitton & Moseley, 2018). It also follows that playful environments can be potentially very useful for subjects with a strong performance element such as languages.

We were aware that one of the main difficulties in playful learning interventions is catering for the very diverse preferences and needs of different audiences.

The research was thus inspired by these two main research questions:
RQ1: To what extent will engagement with playful activities enhance students’ learning experience?
RQ2: What design elements can create the right conditions for open and distance learning students to engage with playful learning?

We designed two activities: an online board game to be played on tutorials (via Adobe Connect) and two supporting forum activities (via Moodle). In the game, three teams raced along Latin America collecting badges for speaking for a set period (30 seconds or 60 seconds, as decided by each participant in each turn). The forum activities were designed to support the game by inviting participants to join one of three teams and then share images (personal photos or images found on internet) of the destinations in each session of the game. The game and online activities were play-tested with a small group of volunteer students in 2020. An extension to the game set in Spain was further co-designed in 2020 with these volunteer students. In 2021, the game has been offered to all students as part of the tuition and between 20 and 25 students had taken part in all the sessions (five sessions) and feedback has been collected with a questionnaire and interviews. In this presentation we discuss the potential of games for teaching and learning language and we share good practice.

Keywords:

Playful learning, serious games, open and distance learning, adult learner, languages.