Abstract:

Creative language is a kind of language on the rise, with endless possibilities, that comes up with literary devices commonly used in the literature field. These literary devices are normally learnt at educational centers (school, high school, university), being considered complex concepts because they play with the meaning of the words, thus using figurative language, and being not normally used in our daily life. Moreover, its learning may require an additional effort, depending on the difficulty level of the literary device and the background or cognitive capacity of the student. Educational computer applications play an important role to facilitate the learning of concepts and subjects, as well as to engage and motivate students using techniques such as gamification, that are inspired by game mechanics. These techniques can help to achieve the learning goals by introducing interactivity.

The goal of this paper is to present the design and development of a web application, called GRAMA, framed in the educational field and oriented to the learning of different literary devices in a social and collaborative environment, through gamification elements. Among the literary devices offered in GRAMA there are some popular and commonly used devices for joy and entertainment, such as tongue-twister and cryptograms, whereas there are other less known, but outstanding for their expressive and creative character, such as puns, palindromes, lipograms and pangrams. To facilitate the learning of this type of concepts, a user-oriented interface is provided, where users can create and share new literary devices, view and rate other users’ creations, and play with literary devices proposed at different levels of difficulty (easy, normal and expert), which may contribute to enhance and consolidate their knowledge and develop their creativity. Moreover, considering the motivation of the user as an important factor for the learning stage, the application integrates social elements (e.g., friends) as well as a scoring system, which allows them to monitor their progress and compete with others.

Although it might be thought that GRAMA is only appropriate for students, it is not targeted to any particular group of users, since it aims to be useful for anybody who wants to learn, reinforce concepts, entertain and enjoy while playing with the words.

In terms of technology, some of the latest state-of-the-art web standards and technologies were adopted, paying special attention to the design and accessibility of the application, so any user can use it from any device at anytime and from anywhere.

After the design and development of the web application, an anonymous survey was designed and conducted to 15 users of different background, age and sex to evaluate and get feedback for GRAMA, also considering other issues such as their knowledge in linguistics and the learning of literary devices in collaborative environments through gamification.

From the results obtained, GRAMA is seen as a useful tool, that can contribute to the learning and reinforcement of new concepts in an easy and enjoyable manner. Therefore, the benefits obtained by applying methodologies such as gamification in collaborative environments are confirmed.

Currently, GRAMA is online available and free. In the future, we plan to add more literary devices, and allow users to adapt the games to their own level or knowledge, among other configuration options.

Keywords:

Educational technology/experience, Educational Software experiences, Collaborative Virtual Environments (CVEs), Gamification, Creativity, GRAMA.