Abstract
The GANA-AR project activates the competencies of future infant and primary school teachers through the design of gamified stories with augmented reality. It is an interactive digital environment with an educational aim which encourages learning through immersion and emotional engagement in a plot and the incorporation of game mechanics, dynamics, and aesthetics. The study was empirical, non-probabilistic (N=62), descriptive, and inferential. It was exploratory and analytical, with the objective of assessing university students' didactic, digital, creative, and socio-collaborative skills, and their abilities in gamification. The study found moderate-to-high levels of competence, with the highest levels in didactic competence, followed by digital. In addition, the students' gamified resources indicated high creative skills. This project allowed students to develop their teaching competencies through collaboratively creating gamified, digitally augmented resources to a high level of artistic and aesthetic quality.
Top1. Introduction
The challenges caused by the pandemic have led to changes in teachers’ training practices, which has meant accelerated self-teaching to bring teachers up to date. This has been a catalyst for incorporating innovative methodologies based on emerging technologies—such as virtual and augmented reality—in the educational setting (Sala, 2021). There is no doubt that teachers need training to improve their digital skills and to be able to manage distance-learning applications and platforms, create their own digital resources, and design activities tailored to their students’ characteristics (Alalwan et al., 2020; Silva et al., 2020; Tzima et al., 2019; Wu et al., 2020).
There are innovative experiences in the initial training of teachers —nationally and internationally— supported by digital resources and augmented reality which have produced positive results associated with student motivation and, among other things, stimulation of digital skills (Cesário, 2019; Choolarb et al., 2019; Sáez-López et al., 2020). There is no doubt about the need to properly equip future teachers as they will be the drivers of innovation in schools. That means that their training should aim to activate teaching and digital competencies so that they are able to run inclusive projects tailored to the cognitive diversity of their students, whose world is ever more computerized.
Teachers’ initial training should provide them with strategies that allow them to implement innovative, active methodologies, and to design their own digital resources (Alalwan et al., 2020; Gallardo et al., 2019; Marques & Pombo, 2021; Tzima et al., 2019) that will encourage immersive, meaningful learning (Beck, 2019). In addition, they should be aware of the possibilities of games and their benefits in education, and they can be trained to be able to incorporate gamification as an innovative technique, using the mechanics and dynamics of games as ideal strategies for encouraging learning (Su, 2019).
Creating digital narratives involves activating students’ communicative, narrative, digital, creative and socio-collaborative skills (Del Moral et al., 2016a; 2016b). This creative process brings together narrative skills related to story creation and other digital skills for placing the story in a virtual environment (Wu & Chen, 2020). The next step is integrating those two activities, and taking the opportunity to make a story into a game with an educational aim, thus enhancing learner engagement and promoting assimilation of content in an enjoyable, motivating context (Aumgri & Apirating, 2022; Nóbrega & Russo, 2022). Along these lines Del Moral and López-Bouzas (2022) have produced initiatives which have helped activate didactic and digital competencies through gamification supported by augmented reality (AR) resources. The Gamified Narratives with Augmented Reality (GANA-AR) project was created, aimed at teaching future teachers how to use technological tools to create their own resources, specifically how to create gamified narratives supported by augmented reality (AR).
In the initial of teacher training, the project Gamified Narratives with Augmented Reality (GANA-AR) has been created, aimed at teaching future teachers how to use technological tools to create their own resources, specifically how to create gamified narratives supported by augmented reality (AR).
Key Terms in this Chapter
Gamified augmented stories: These are immersive stories that combine enjoyable learning with activities that are supported by augmented reality, promoting students’ immersion in the learning process through interacting with their digital devices.
Didactic competence: The mix of knowledge, skills, and attitudes that allow future teachers to plan and implement successful teaching-learning processes. This study considered the didactic competencies needed to design gamified, augmented stories.
Narrative competence: The ability to understand and produce original stories, adding fictional characters and imaginative situations, and establishing causal and temporal relationships that lead to a consistent outcome. High levels of narrative competence also imply speaking skills, varying the narrator and the perspective, using expressive language, and communicating characters’ thoughts and emotions.
Socio-collaborative competence: The mix of knowledge, skills, and attitudes that allow the subjects to work together in a team. These competencies are essential, and are especially promoted with the design of gamified, augmented stories.
Digital teaching competence: The mix of knowledge, skills, and attitudes that allow future teachers to effectively use digital technology in various settings. This study considered digital competency in relation to the selection, management, and creation of AR resources and their educational application.
Gamification: Adoption of the mechanics, dynamics, and aesthetics of games to encourage educational processes, turning learning into something enjoyable to minimize the cognitive effort involved in comprehension of complex concepts and processes.
Immersive Capacity: Predisposition of subjects to immerse themselves in a stimulating setting, activity, game, story, etc. which focuses their full attention and activates their interest, managing to activate their emotional involvement with the characters, plot, and objectives.
Augmented Reality (AR): Technology based on combining virtual information and physical, real-world information, where virtual content is superimposed on the perception of real elements. This technology offers users an enriched or augmented view of their surroundings. It needs a computer or mobile device, preferably with an integrated camera, an activator to access the augmented content by scanning it, software or specific applications, and an internet connection.
Creative competence: The mix of knowledge, skills, and attitudes that allow the subjects to deal with challenges, solve problems, and produce elements (ideas, artistic product, etc.) that are original and novel. This study considered the competencies that made it possible to design, produce, and combine the various narrative and digital resources in original ways to create a gamified story with augmented reality.