Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
The Active Use of Online Presence, Movies
and Gameplay to Improve Classroom Engagement
Sean Costain and Dale Patterson
Queensland College of Art, Griffith University, Gold Coast, Australia
{s.costain,d.patterson}@griffith.edu.au
Abstract.
The online world is filled with rich interactive games, spaces, motion
pictures and personas. Despite a rapid growth in online education, the tertiary
classroom looks quite different to the entertaining online world it exists within.
The design of mobile online resources, both official and unofficial, plays a key
role in student engagement and learning. From the teachers perspective
designing an online presence and in particular engaging online learning
resources, is critical to the success of the learning environment. This project
looked at the use of popular forms of online materials, including gameplay,
movies and social media, and whether the application of entertainment centered
tools enhanced the learning environment. The results of the 9 year, 984
participant study indicate that the increased and active use of the entertainment
based tools had a significant positive effect in terms of student engagement and
a significant positive effect on learning outcomes for international students.
Keywords:
online learning, student engagement, gameplay, social media.
1
Introduction
The online environment, available today to students, offers resources on an enormous
scale. Unfortunately the reliability of these resources is less clearly indicated. Prior to
the widespread use of the web, the learning and teaching environments used in
tertiary education were significantly simpler, both in terms of technology, scale of
information and reliability of information. With the addition of mobile online learning
resources, online course delivery and social media communications, the tertiary
education space is a very different place to that which existed just 25 years ago [1,2].
Today students have immediate access to the pool of rich online resources in a range
of interactive forms. Knowledge of facts has become less relevant to these students as
they have 24 hour a day, seven day a week, access to information at their fingertips.
The ability to discern valuable information, as compared to the less reliable
information, from the mix that exists on the web, becomes a critically important skill
for the student [3,4]. Aside from pure informational resources, the web also offers a
range of richer and more engaging options. These include social media, chat as well
as online video and audio tutorials and advice on “how to” complete numerous tasks.
These more interactive and visually richer forms of accessing information appeal
to students on many levels, including personal engagement as well as simply being a
more entertaining way to obtain the required information [5,6].
