The Active Use of Online Presence, Movies and Gameplay to Improve Classroom Engagement

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.