WHEN FUN COMES INTO THE CLASSROOM: USING GAMIFICATION TO ENGAGE STUDENTS AND ENTREPRENEURS IN VOCATIONAL EDUCATION AND TRAINING

This study reports an educational experience carried out in Tourism Centres in the Valencian Community, a public body providing vocational education and training (VET) in hospitality and tourism. The final part of the training is a practical module dealing with entrepreneurship and job seeking. In this module we use gamification methods and techniques to engage students and present entrepreneurship as a potential career choice for students who have a business idea and who would prefer not to work for an existing company. Our main goal is to provide students with valuable entrepreneurial competences and abilities, such as leadership, team work, negotiation and motivation. We apply a method involving games as a motivator and a way to involve and engage students.

This training combines theoretical content with practical dynamics using elements such as badges, rankings or contests. These features are used to motivate students and introduce them to the world of entrepreneurship, making them feel part of it. At the end of the course we asked students for their feedback. The results were striking in comparison with the feedback from the same training in which this method was not applied. The paper concludes by outlining future challenges facing students in relation to entrepreneurship, abilities, competences and methods for transmitting knowledge and attitudes to students of different ages and interests.