Abstract:

Contemporary education has been dramatically and meaningfully changed by the recent events of the last five years. With the pandemic teachers have mastered using various ICT tools for teaching and supporting learning. While there is no doubt that these tools are useful and productive for acquiring knowledge-orientated competencies, it remains to be explored whether the same applies to the acquisition of soft skills, such as skills associated with emotional intelligence. Law enforcement officers are constantly exposed to stressful, high-pressure situations in their professional lives, thus emotional intelligence techniques should have a place in their pre-service and in-service training. However, the field lacks robust attention and research. While implementing the KA220-VET - Cooperation partnerships in vocational education and training project: A developmental and educational platform and gamified tools for training police officers and similar professionals, concerning communications, it was found that the professional field of law enforcement is not examined significantly from that perspective. The empirical pilot study showed great demand for such techniques, though whether gamification will be helpful depends on several conditions. Namely: the quality of the preparatory/introductory phase, immediate and generalized feedback, the relevance of gamified situations to real-life/professional situations, and the other conditions (which we will outline in greater detail in the paper further on).

Keywords:

Emotional Intelligence, gamification, e-learning, soft skills.