Action research on the application of technology assisted urban gaming in language education in a Polish upper-secondary school

ABSTRACT

Being able to communicate in foreign languages, along with the remaining key competences for lifelong learning, are of special significance for upper-secondary school students – soon-to-be tertiary education students and employees. Although Polish educational authorities have made efforts to account for this need in the Core Curriculum for Modern Languages, the provisions are pursued with difficulty in school practice. The aim of this paper is to address this challenge by exploring and evaluating the feasibility and student-participant perceptions of urban gaming in school settings as a didactic tool that facilitates language education, as well as digital, social, and learning to learn skills development in an upper-secondary school. Accordingly, the paper presents the design, implementation and evaluation of a technology assisted urban game named ‘As it once was in Cracow—discovering the history of the city’, developed for a group of Polish upper-secondary school students (N = 25) from Warsaw. The results provide evidence for student-perceived educational gains with regard to the development of skills such as teamwork, digital literacy, the English language, and content (history) knowledge.

KEYWORDS:

• Urban game
• language learning
• mobile technology
• upper-secondary school

Acknowledgment

The authors thank the anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments and suggestions to improve the quality of the paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. In Poland, examples of designed, organised and documented urban games include the following initiatives:

• to popularise literature: http://static.wbp.poznan.pl/att/x-archiwum/6_228_pl_p_kaczmarek_lesniak_p2.pdf

• to popularise the history and culture of a region: http://www.gimnazjum-wasilkow.edu.pl/index.php?strona=turystyka&id=826

• to teach history and geography: http://www.superbelfrzy.edu.pl/projektomania/gra-miejska-jak-stworzyc/

• to raise awareness of Internet security issues: http://5medium.org/wp-content/uploads/Alicja_w_Krainie_Fejsbuka.pdf

• to promote towns: http://gramiejska.pl/index.php?id=385

• to engage participants in global education: https://www.pah.org.pl/app/uploads/2017/06/2017_dlaszkol_wlacz_sie_do_gry_dla_szkol.pdf

2. The described study is part of the project called the Hatters. The project was designed, developed, implemented and evaluated in the cooperation of the Student Society SNEC (Pedagogical University of Cracow, Cracow, Poland) with the 21st Kołłątaj Secondary School (Warsaw, Poland) in the 2016/2017 academic year. Project goals were related to the development of the key competences vital to function in the modern knowledge-based society, as stipulated in Recommendation (…) on key competences for lifelong learning, among upper-secondary school students. As the project constituted a year-long extracurricular activity, in order to ensure student engagement, the learning experience was gamified: students went through five rounds/challenges, each round dealing with a different key competence, corresponding to one school subject, i.e. history, biology, maths, Polish language and culture, social sciences. Throughout the project students worked in teams of five, presented their results online in English, using various open-source digital tools. All the teams that reached the final received Magic Hats that operate on school teachers in the 2017/2018 school year (more about the project in: Pitura & Chmielarz, 2017; Pitura & Berlińska-Kopeć, 2018).

3. Erasmus+ is the European Commission's Programme for education, training, youth and sport for the period 2014–2020. The programme offers opportunities for mobility of learners and staff, as well as cooperation for organisations in education, training and youth sectors. Within this programme university students come to study in another European country for a period of time, e.g. one semester. More information: http://ec.europa.eu/programmes/erasmus-plus/about_en

4. The same questions were used to evaluate all learning activities in the Hatters project, as also reported in Pitura and Chmielarz (2017), Pitura and Berlińska-Kopeć (2018). Using the same questions served for comparison purposes and project overall evaluation.

5. The same items, slightly modified, were used to measure perception of other challenges in the Hatters project, as described in Pitura and Chmielarz (2017), Pitura and Berlińska-Kopeć (2018).

6. Own translation of the quotations provided by study participants in Polish throughout the text.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Joanna Pitura

Dr. Joanna Pitura—an academic teacher at the Pedagogical University of Cracow, Cracow, Poland. Her current research interests revolve around technology assisted language learning, inclusive language education, instructional design, and design-based research.

Elżbieta Terlecka-Pacut

Elżbieta Terlecka-Pacut—a Jagiellonian University alumnus and a keen admirer of Cracow. She is a teacher of history at the 21st Kołłątaj Secondary School in Warsaw, Poland, where she has also acted as a vice-principal.