Games in and as Learning

Starting the Chinese language faculty on a journey to gamify their lessons

When the Head of the Chinese Language faculty approached me with an idea it was pretty exciting. Her team had allocated some time at the start of every lesson to do some engaging, fun language activities that got the students engaged and ready to launch into their learning. The idea was to use that time to connect with digital resources.

So we started by introducing staff to 3 tools they could build games, quizzes and activities in - Quizlet, Kahoot and Blabberize - with a key feature being that they could all run in Chinese. This meant the staff could explore ones of interest, making and sharing resources between classes.  The next step was to teach the students to make resources so they could start adding to the games available - all whilst practicing and refining their Chinese language skills!