Approaching Playful Learning and Gamification with Adult Learners

Play in adulthood can often be stigmatised and these attitudes can limit some participants ability to participate - either due to their own beliefs or a fear of judgement.

Whitton (2018) recommends making these concerns visible and confronting them. Explain why you are using your approach and how it creates a safe space for adults to engage with and learn something about a relevant and important real-world matter. 

You may still find individual participants disengaging with the activity or trying to make it more serious. They may have misunderstood the instructions so you could gently remind them but remember that you can't force fun. Again, Whitton (2018) notes that playfulness is a privilege. As with any other teaching approach there are social and cultural reasons they may not work for individual participants. Recognise and respect that but request them to respect other participants and allow them to engage without feeling judged.

Whitton, N. (2018). Playful learning: Tools, techniques, and tactics: Association for learning technology journal. Research in Learning Technology, 26 doi:https://doi.org/10.25304/rlt.v26.2035  

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Creating a condusive environment online

For asynchronous online play, game host may need to build a culture of online participation and sharing if it does not already exist. 

Participants will need a digital space to share their results--this can be on digital discussion boards such as Teams, Slack, or discussion forums within a virtual learning environment. The key is this should be a space where participants are already accustomed to check regularly,   preferably with push-notifications of new posts to reduce the effort needed for engagement. 

Game host should be prepared to respond to posts, answer interface usage questions, and facilitate discussion. Responding and encouraging engagement is likely to take up most of game host's effort.

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Creating a conducive environment face-to-face

Its easy to loose track of details like "oh, my participants need pens to do this...I should have brought pens"

Think through what you need to do to ensure the session runs as smoothly as possible. If you're using webpages how will users access them? What links are you providing? Do you have pens and paper? Does anything need printed? A Gen AI Tool could help prompt you.

It can also get a bit noisy and chaotic - some participants could find it overwhelming so warn them and try to set aside a quiet space. 

Finally take a moment to ground participants with some context and ensure they understand the activity rather than launching them into the deep end.

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Facilitating asynchronous activities

You will most likely need an online environment such as Teams or discussion forum to collect responses and encourage continuous engagement. See Creating a condusive environment online for tips. 

Consider creating a leaderboard to encourage continuous engagement. 

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