The paper deals with a gamified approach developed to support teachers' reflection and awareness on a set of specific behaviours that can support informal learning. The approach adopts a metaphor, vegetable gardens to be grown, to represent the teachers' participatory practice and is enriched with specific game mechanics (tasks, goals and badges). The metaphor was reified in two different modalities: paper-based and digital. The approach was preliminary tested with two groups of teachers.
In the literature some authors claim teachers’ professional development is highly
informed by practice [
To nurture teachers’ capacity to work with colleagues and share their practices, we propose to support their awareness and reflection on a set of desirable behaviours that can enhance their professional learning by increasing their participatory skills.
Our proposal is grounded in the framework proposed by Littlejohn [
Persico and colleagues [
To support teachers’ awareness and reflection on the 4Cs behaviours, we propose to adopt a gamified approach. The approach is intended for groups of teachers working together during workshops or in any other practice-based opportunity (online or face to face) where teachers work in groups. The experience needs to be led and mediated by, at least, an expert to guide teachers through it.
According to Deterding, gamification refers to the selective incorporation of game
elements into an interactive system without a fully-fledged game as the end product
[57]. Following Zicherman and Cunningham [
The application of gamification in education and training has raised criticisms, since
there is a tendency to use a points-based approach to trigger learners engagement and
external motivation by means of rewards [
Our approach aims to go in this direction and is in line with the vision proposed by
Craven [
In the approach we propose, specific desirable behaviours (the 4Cs behaviours) are linked with the progression in the gamified experience, which is based on a metaphor of group and community gardens to be enriched (described below), rather than points to be acquired.
According to the model proposed by Blohm & Leimeister [
For our purposes, we have adopted the metaphor of the vegetable garden, which is a fertile ground that needs to be planted and taken care of, and we have developed a narrative around this metaphor.
We envisage several gardens (one for each group of teachers) as well as a shared garden for the whole community. In our metaphor, knowledge is represented by vegetables: knowledge produced by each group is represented by a specific type of vegetable (carrots, tomatoes, etc.) and knowledge coming from the expert or from external sources is represented by radish (see Fig. 1).
A single vegetable can represent knowledge at different levels of granularity: a single resource or an idea created/consumed/contributed or connected by a group of teachers, or something more complex.
In the metaphor, the 4 desirable behaviours (Consume, Create, Connect and Contribute) are represented by actions teachers carry out in the gardens: • Consume is represented by moving a vegetable from the shared garden to the group own garden and consists in a group making use of knowledge items available in the common garden. • Create is represented by adding a new vegetable in the own garden (a carrot in the carrot garden, etc.) and consists in the group producing a new item of knowledge. • Connect is represented by connecting two (or more) vegetables in the shared garden and consists in two or more groups communicating around an item of knowledge • Contribute is represented by moving a vegetable from the own to the shared garden and consists in a group making available an item of knowledge to the other groups.
This metaphor, therefore, visually represents the 4Cs behaviours of the teachers by displaying the knowledge made available by each group and /or by the whole community.
In order to reify the metaphor, we have experimented two different modalities: reification through paperboards and cards, with a first set of teachers, and through digital boards and padlets, with a second set (see Fig. 2).
The two different modalities have been tested in similar contexts. The game mechanics in the two versions were the same; the two versions were developed and experimented to understand whether and to what extent teachers showed any preference regarding using tangibles in respect to digital objects. However, the preliminary data reported in this paper do not compare the two sets, rather, they provide information about the opinions of the involved teachers about the effectiveness of the metaphor used.
In any case, the proposed narrative puts teachers in the role of farmers, who have the scope of growing their own group garden with different vegetables and, at the same time, to grow the shared garden. While working in groups to carry out a task during a workshop, teachers discuss and – in doing so – they create, consume, contribute knowledge and connect with other groups about a piece of knowledge. For each of these 4Cs actions, teachers are required to add the related cards to their boards (paperboards or tablets), so that during the workshop the various gardens would gradually be enriched with the vegetables planted by the groups.
To further support mutual exchange among groups, each group is invited to choose one ‘connector’ (i.e. a member of the group) in charge of collecting knowledge from the other groups and coming back to the group bringing the knowledge from the others.
At specific moments of the workshop, time is devoted to observing (in plenary sessions) the gardens (paperboards or digital boards) and the ways they were evolving through time, with the aim of supporting teachers’ reflection on the practiced 4Cs behaviours: vegetables observables in gardens reveal behaviours put into practice by single groups and by the community as a whole.
To conclude the process, at the end of the workshop/working session, groups are awarded badges, according to the most practiced behaviour. Such badge assignment have the scope of increasing teachers’ self-awareness about their 4Cs behaviours. In this way, groups can set their goals, session by session, to collect the whole set of badges or just free to reflect on their behaviours.
Teachers filled in an end-of workshop questionnaire about the proposed gamified experience. In the following, some preliminary results are reported. The sample was composed of 34 teachers of upper secondary school, 10 teachers used the paper version, 24 the digital one.
Teachers were asked to rate their level of agreement about some statements on a scale from 1 (Completely disagree) to 5 (Completely agree). Quartiles were calculated for each question using SPSS1.
Results are reported in the table hereunder (Table 1) Stimulating reflection on the use of ideas and resources (made available by trainers, colleagues). [Consume] Stimulating reflection on new ideas generation in my group or ideas/resources adaptation. [Create] Stimulating reflection on the importance of discussing ideas with colleagues. [Connect] Stimulating reflection on the importance of sharing ideas with colleagues [Contribute] Stimulating reflection on the ongoing process of professional development
As shown in Table1, teachers gave a moderately positive evaluation of the support provided by the gamified approach to reflection about the different behaviours considered (4Cs) and, in general, about the process of professional development they underwent. Medians are higher than the central value for the behaviours “Connect” and “Contribute”. 1 Statistical Package for Social Science (https://www.ibm.com/analytics/us/en/technology/spss/)
As already mentioned, recently the gamified approach was proposed and tested during a teacher training initiative and delivered to two communities of teachers. During the experience, the approach was reified through a paper based version of the approach as well as a digital version. The preliminary results reported here do not distinguish between the two versions, rather, they provide a preliminary feedback on the acceptance of the approach by the teachers. A first analysis of the reported data reveals positive results in terms of perceived usefulness of the gamified approach proposed to support reflection and awareness in respect to the behaviours enacted. Results are encouraging, considering that the approach is still under study and, of course, will benefit of a more in depth evaluation.