More play to engage students and deepen learning
More play to engage students and deepen learning
By Noelia Dominguez Falcon, Kelly Edmunds, Becky Lewis
June 14, 2023
Summary
Encouraging students to engage in play allows experimentation, risk-taking, exploring curiosity and the potential for failure, but in a low-stakes, safe setting.
Such approaches can help students to develop a growth mindset and build a stronger sense of self-efficacy - their belief in their ability to succeed in a task.
Incorporating play into an undergraduate curriculum can be a powerful tool for developing student engagement, knowledge and skills such as problem-solving and team-working.
Encouraging creativity and group-based play in transition or induction activities, such as design challenges like collaboratively building a model of an effective study space, can help to encourage teamwork, remove socio-economic barriers between students and foster a sense of belonging and community within a cohort.
We have developed an interactive flash-card activity to help first-year undergraduate students visualise the different sections of an essay for a given topic.
Students are meant to solve the question after looking at the image, prompting them to discuss lecture content between them and reinforcing their learning.
As well as helping to engage students in class, they can help to foster a sense of community within a cohort.
Reference
Falcon, N., Edmunds, K., & Lewis, B. (2023, June 14). More play to engage students and deepen learning. THE Campus Learn, Share, Connect. https://www.timeshighereducation.com/campus/more-play-engage-students-and-deepen-learning