Gamification of Education

Dr. Petros Lameras, one of the STEAM partners, had participated to a workshop on Xtended Reality Leadership for Xtra-ordinary Leaders which held from June 20th to 21th, 2019 in Coventry University & E-Learning Studios (UK).

It was an occasion to communicate on STEAM, the "Serious game to Train Experts in Advanced Multimodality" to a broader audience and disseminate the serious game.

To introduce his speech, Petros Lameras returned to the meaning of multimodality. It consists of multiple modes to increase meaning making process efficiency. Each mode combines strategy, tool and location for various engagement levels. Petros explained the objective of STEAM a project built around a serious game. The objective was to train teacher how to provide their students with interaction and contextual learning, multipurpose, fun and engagement. He continued his presentation with the description of the game purpose and mechanics. The in-game outcomes are different ways of designing and delivering multimodality. The game gives feedback to player and a scenario whose complexity is progressive. The core game mechanics offers multimodal cards to combine according to the learning objective.

Petros presented the results of the experimentations conducted during the project. The analysis of teacher feedback leads to the identification of 4 categories of teaching situations in which the serious game can provide support: (1) Learning diversity for increasing engagement and motivation; (2) Developing senses for attaining deeper understanding of the topic; (3) Students into the design of teaching for hands-on learning; (4) Supporting autonomy and self-directing through collaborative project. Depending on each category, some modalities are more interesting than others. For example when one aims engagement, it’s better to design a scenario that fosters debates, discussion in face-to-face, distant or blended learning. Dr. Petros Lameras showed the interest in having all these proposals online on a serious game to train teachers to explore their potential and imagine how they could be implemented with the students.