The sudden and vast shift in digital learning due to the COVID-19 pandemic significantly impacted teaching and learning methods and consequences in delivering high-quality education and innovative learning approaches. However, teachers were clearly not prepared for this rapid change to digital. In fact, according to OECD (2019), TALIS 2018 Results. Teachers and School Leaders report that only 39% of teachers in the EU feel well prepared for using digital technologies in their daily work. This is a tiny percentage compared to the urgent demand for adaptation to digital learning.
Consequently, it has been noticed that due to the Covid-19 accelerated change in the learning context, teachers went back to the essentials and a traditional way of teaching and learning. In contrast, gamified elements have entirely disappeared from their teaching practice. At the same time, student-learners face difficulties maintaining their interest and motivation in learning under these circumstances.
For this reason, the project Gamification of Digital Learning (GDL) was created to support educators and learners in this transition by applying gamification to digital learning environments. To achieve its goals, GDL aims to produce the following results:
- A Compendium of Methods for Gamification in Digital Learning that offers a definition, a literature review, and experts’ experiences of existing gamification approaches in digital learning.
- A creation of a technical toolbox which gathers 40 currently available online resources, tools, platforms and software that allow gamification and are recommended for teachers and educators.
- An eLearning course for teachers and educators to train and support their competencies in gamification for online education. • A presentation of 15 Pedagogical sequences providing pedagogical application and examples of lesson plans using gamification tools for online learning (synchronous and asynchronous).
- 30 Explanatory tools sheets to share specific knowledge and all the necessary information for applying the gamification tools and techniques so that users can reproduce the learning experience.
These materials will be adapted to students with specific needs such as learning disorders.
The goal of GDL is to reinforce educators’ digital teaching skills and motivate them to introduce game-like designs in non-gaming contexts to ease the challenges of digital education.
The first result, Compendium of Methods for Gamification in Digital Learning is already available on GDL’s page.