By Marc Vézina, digital educational consultant in vocational training, RÉCIT Vocational Training
Students pursuing vocational training (VT) are highly motivated to learn tasks related to their chosen career, be it caring for the elderly, preparing meals, or driving trucks. This is generally what they expect. In this context, the typical course of a lesson begins with a contextual setting, followed by a demonstration that students must reproduce before reflecting on the knowledge acquired during the experience.
Maintaining motivation becomes more difficult when it comes to learning concepts related to these tasks, such as infection and contamination prevention, hygiene and food safety, or the various regulations in the transportation sector. However, the FP teaching staff is trying to make lessons more lively and dynamic while promoting student participation by using diverse teaching methods and increasing technological resources. Several examples show that including play in education, even when students are no longer children, can be a positive factor.
Play in distance learning
In many healthcare VT programs, the traditional approach is to take students through the steps of a learning workbook as they read to acquire information and complete exercises to check understanding. As a new teacher in the Institutional and Home Care Assistance program, Spencer Buttle didn’t want to limit himself to this model.
First, the center where he teaches, the Anchor Academic and Vocational Center in New Carlisle (Eastern Shores School Board), covers a huge area. Since he has to deliver most of his classes online, he feared difficulties in engaging and engaging students.
Additionally, he had grown up watching and enjoying game shows like “Jeopardy” and “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?” So of course he decided to incorporate this type of game into his lessons. “Incorporating games makes it more fun and changes the perspective of a traditional class where you’re constantly reading,” he said.
He used templates from the Internet such as interactive websites and downloadable slideshows. He created questionnaires that focused mainly on the concepts to be tested, but added some new elements to stimulate students’ curiosity and allow them to share knowledge previously acquired in their professional experience or personal life.
By devoting about thirty minutes almost daily to them, he found that the games had a positive impact on student engagement and information retention. He also attributes the high quality of interpersonal relationships he observed among his students to the fact that they play as a team.
Turn skill 1 into an exploration game
Most VT programs in Quebec begin with the competency(1) Trade and Training, which aims to introduce new students to the realities of trade, understand the training program and clarify their career direction. Typically, they need to research job opportunities, meet people in the industry, think about their goals, talk about professionalism, etc.
To this end, the teachers of the Secretarial Program at the Sorel-Tracy Vocational Training and Adult Education Center (Sorel-Tracy School Service Center) wanted to enliven the roadmap provided to students with the attributes typical of an exploratory role-playing game. To guide the route, they used a community map that leads to various written or audiovisual documents that need to be viewed or completed. Non-player characters, such as guidance from teachers or secretaries being interviewed, are embodied by animated avatars created using the Korean application Zepeto. The latter allows you to create a 3D character that comes to life using the voice of an original audio recording.
Jean-François Jutras, educational advisor at the local RÉCIT of the CSS de Sorel-Tracy, is supporting the teachers in the further development of the project. He emphasizes the importance of personalizing the experience so that each student links the game’s presentation to their school account. Everyone also receives an individualized cloud copy of the documents to be completed, which allows for direct feedback from teachers. Mr Jutras adds that it is important to provide an authentically entertaining experience. “Like in Mario Bros., you have to save the princess at the end. You can’t just tell the student, ‘Click here and that’s it,'” he says. The team therefore plans to conclude the course with a congratulatory video, which will only be accessible once all phases of the course have been successfully completed.
The game does not replace the teacher
The research of communication doctoral student and initiator of the Bad Game Arcade event, Scott DeJong from Concordia University in Montreal, focuses on various aspects of gaming in education, in particular on the use of video games in general education (of young people or adults) . Furthermore, his analysis of the difference between gamification and game-based learning (2) and the role that the teacher must take in a gaming context is particularly relevant for consideration in FP. In an article published in 2023, he explains that too many educational games try to replace the teacher, when in fact they should enable him to better fulfill his role as facilitator.
“Good facilitation connects teaching and play, enabling reflection before, during and after the game” (DeJong, 2023).
The teacher must therefore remain able to discuss students’ interests and difficulties, make connections to previously seen concepts, and understand the game from the perspective of the player and learner.
The winning conditions
The use of games, especially for older learners, for example in vocational training, is no guarantee of learning success. Rather, it depends on the precision of the educational intentions and the fit with the course of study; The fact that students have a good time does not guarantee that the concepts or procedures to be understood have been internalized. Mr. DeJong frames the question well by asking whether the intent is to teach or to pass time (“Teach students or kill time”).
The Sorel-Tracy project shows the importance of involving the school team in the acquisition of the applications and tools to develop the game. Only after considering other options and, after several trials and errors, the Jepeto digital applications were implemented. Ingeniously, the choice fell on YouTube, Google Maps and MS Word. And it is above all the motivation of the people involved in the project and the time invested that made the development of the exploration game Secrets of Secretaries possible.
For his part, Mr. Buttle emphasizes that in education in general, but especially in a program focused on empathy and care like the one in which he teaches, the most important thing is not the context, the equipment or resources used, but the quality the relationship built between teacher and learner. “The classroom must have a nice atmosphere, be open, fun and active.”
(1) In the VT, each part of a program is entitled “Competency” and contains a “Statement” that describes what the student must be able to do and “Elements” that distinguish the different types of tasks involved.
(2) Gamification integrates game elements such as a timer or scores into learning activities. Applications like Kahoot or Socrative are good examples. Gamification, in turn, takes the approach further by creating games specifically tailored to learning or even involving students in the design of the game with the intention of staying closer to the content being learned and the learners’ intrinsic qualities .
Usefull links :
Danger
Wheel of Fortune
Who will become a millionaire?
Zepeto
DeJong, S. (2023, January). Video games can improve classroom learning, but not without the support of teachers. The conversation. https://theconversation.com/video-gaming-can-bolster-classroom-learning-but-not-without-teacher-support-190483
Are you interested in the topic of play in education? Get the Winter 2023-2024 issue of Écolebranchee magazine: Play to Learn: The Secrets of Gamification (in French) and Play to learn – The secrets of gamification (in English).