Ready, steady…evaluate: using an online spinner to enliven learning activities
Ready, steady…evaluate: using an online spinner to enliven learning activities
Sarah Hack
What is the idea?
In many disciplines students are required to participate in regularly occurring tasks, the repetitive nature of which may in turn lead to dwindling and superficial engagement. One way to address this is through ‘gamification’, defined as ‘the use of game attributes, outside the context of a game with the purpose of affecting learning’ (Rivera & Garden, 2021, p. 1000). Here gamification was introduced through the use of an online spinner which brought randomness to a familiar task, and a Padlet which enabled students to add contributions anonymously. The randomness contributed to the development of a sense of suspense in the activity, whilst the anonymity of contributions allowed all students to answer without worrying that their suggestions might be ‘wrong’. This is particularly important in a programme where students start with varying levels of prior knowledge, and supports inclusion by allowing those less familiar with key concepts the opportunity to apply their understanding ‘safely’.
In addition to outlining different ways a simple online spinner may be used to ‘gamify the mundane’ and therefore to re-engage students and aid active learning, this idea also describes how the online spinner may be used to encourage engagement across different learning environments (on-campus, online and hybrid) and how it may be adapted for use in a variety of contexts.
Why this idea?
Although interestingly, empirical evidence regarding the impact of gamification on student motivation has been equivocal (Dichev & Dichevea, 2017), practitioners know from experience that introducing novel activities within a teaching session can be effective in encouraging task engagement (Rivera & Garden, 2021). This activity was developed to provide novelty, but also to support the development of critical thinking without the constraints that may arise when ideas have to be presented more formally. This informality, and that contributions are anonymous, may particularly support the engagement of less confident students (Barr, 2017; Draper & Brown, 2004).
How could others implement this idea?
The activity described is one developed for use in a Foundation Year in Psychology workshop comprising approximately 20 students, although it was later repeated successfully with a group of 50 students. This was a ‘hybrid’ workshop, with some students attending in-person and others joining remotely via Zoom. Here I outline the steps taken to use an online spinner in conjunction with a Padlet to enliven a research evaluation exercise, a regularly occurring activity which as such, may lead to a more superficial engagement with familiarity breeding contempt!
For context, in this particular session we were discussing the use of intelligence tests for the selection of American army recruits during World War I (for a review see Gould, 1982). The focus of this activity was an evaluation of