UX Researcher | Educator
LEARNING THROUGH PLAY IN FORMAL CURRICULUMS
Incorporated board games, technology, multimedia, and picturebooks into formal curriculums
Created engaging, fun, and interactive learning experience
Problem
In the deprived areas, many children tend to lose interests in learning due to their disadvantaged socio-economic backgrounds. Meanwhile, I identified different learning patterns between diverse students, including children with learning disorder and gifted students.
Goal
I conducted action research to find out how to make learning effective, inclusive, and engaging so children want to learn, and can learn.
Models for Learning through Play at School
Meaningful
Children can build on their prior experience and connect learning with their life, home, school, and community.
Example: Through problem-based learning and project-based learning, children developed interview questions and interviewed local eel farmers about their business threats and opportunities.
Socially Interactive
Children can learn through peer interaction. In a project, children are given personalized tasks and collaborate to work.
Example: In mixed-age classrooms, children pair up with different roles according to their abilities and develop their strategies to play games.
Learners rely on and support each other, creating a positive learning atmosphere.
Joyful
Multimedia were incorporated into learning to make learning engaging and interactive. Children were able to make decisions in their learning process and have a sense of agency.
Example: Children had coding classes to develop their own projects.
Example: Children learned basic concepts of geometry through board games.
Example: Children were introduced to learning management systems, such as Epic!, a digital library, to personalize children's daily reading and track progress
Results
Children's creative skills were reinforced when they tried divergent thinking in hands-on projects.
Children were inspired to learn and enhanced their cognitive skills through hands-on and diverse experiences.
Children's social skills were improved through cooperative learning and scaffolding.
Children have hands-on experience with multimedia and were able to use them as learning tools independently.
Children's emotional skills, such as learning self-efficacy and enjoyment of learning, and resilient mindsets were enhanced through play and collaborative active learning.
