An Action Research on Gamified Content and Language Integrated Learning in Technological and Vocational Education in Taiwan

Created on 13th January 2022

Conference: The Asian Conference on Education & International Development (ACEID2022)
Title: An Action Research on Gamified Content and Language Integrated Learning in Technological and Vocational Education in Taiwan
Stream: Teaching Experiences, Pedagogy, Practice & Praxis
Presentation Type: Virtual Poster Presentation
Authors:
Chi-hua Wu, Southern Taiwan University of Science and Technology, Taiwan
Tzu-Han Kao, Southern Taiwan University of Science and Technology, Taiwan

Abstract:

Students’ lack of learning motivation towards academic subjects has been a long-term issue in Technological and Vocational Education (TVE) in Taiwan, and English as a Foreign Language (EFL) is probably one of most affected subjects amongst which. Underlying reasons includes low economic and/or socio-cultural capital, over-emphasize on academics over practice in traditional value, and course arrangement that poorly respond to individual differences. Meanwhile, widely considered educational gamification provides potential remedy; particularly, tangible games, generally with lower development cost comparing to digital ones, is expectable. In this study, action research is adopted to investigate the potential of combining tangible game with learning activities under Taiwanese TVE context. Primarily, the popular boardgame of Citadels is chosen for its capacity of containing large quantity of vocabularies; with story and narrative replaced and adjusted to fit class context, it is applied to the “English in Design Profession” course conducted in 2020/21 and 2021/22. In the first round, students’ participating motivation are surveyed (80 respondents, 25% effective response rate); as a result, 70% students remembered and is interested in participating in the gamified learning activity repeatedly, yet mostly not autonomously outside of class. In the second round, students voluntarily take pre- and post-test results regarding given vocabularies; their progress are assessed via comparison. After evicting the outlier (78 students, 55.1% effective response rate), 65.1% of student demonstrated a progress of 5% or more, and 46.5% of students demonstrated a progress of 20% or more. The result is potentially meaningful and further quantitative analysis is anticipated.