A good way to keep your students engaged and let them have fun while learning is using games or in other words gamifying your activities. You can create a game from scratch or adapt one to achieve specific learning outcomes. You can for instance create learning quizzes, solo card games or adapt board games in a way that suits your learning aims. This is something that you can do in classroom as well as online. 
In online environments, you can plan games to be played collaboratively (in a live class) or individually (as part of your course material).
What is it?
GAMIFICATION is the use of gaming elements in education to favour learning while at the same time foster interaction, engagement and excitement. In this sense, you can add gaming features to your instructions or activities like game points, badges, timing, sound effects or a progress bar. In this way your student will have the illusion to play a game when taking an exercise or activity. This will naturally help them to get out of their comfort zone: as they see the lesson or the activity as a game, they will not feel under pressure or afraid of trying answering questions or speak the foreign language. They will let themselves get carried away from the game!
Benefits of e-learning
Gamification fosters excitement for learning while at the same time promotes interaction, teamwork, problem-solving skills and healthy competition.
It is also useful for practising oral skills.
Tips for effective on-line gamification
- You can (re)create a board game by simply using a presentation programme and devise the game in slides.
- Make sure you write down clear instructions and use pictures, but also interactive elements like videos or other tools. Many tools have ready-made templates that you can simply edit with your own instructions and content.
Check out our Ed Toolkit for information on interesting apps.