In this chapter, the authors investigate the potential of project-oriented game-based learning in making students of educational institutes more engaged and gain a deep understanding of the curriculum content. The literature review presents the main definitions and benefits of project-oriented game-based learning, followed by its contribution to improving the performance of students' training. The results of the research are based on testing the main statements of project-oriented game-based learning empirically – if it really can provide additional value for learners in higher education. The empirical data have been collected based on Ukrainian case study and allow the authors to prove the influence of project-oriented game-based learning on increasing students' engagement, satisfaction, performance, and improving learning outcomes. The main idea of the teaching project was to take as an object of the research a character from a fairytale and analyze its managerial activities. The chapter also analyzes the e-learning instruments which can be used in remote teaching.
TopIntroduction
Today world is becoming more volatile and unpredictable; and no doubts education is being affected by the general trends of human development. And the role of education in the constantly changing environment is quite specific and important: to create those people of the future, who will be able to handle new tasks and overcome difficulties. In human-centered modern educational system a person with necessary knowledge and skills is the main outcome, which is the basis for the critically important goal-setting. Complex and fundamental approach to the goal-setting before starting an educational process or implementing reforms in education on all the levels should consider what exactly modern and prepared for global trends actors must be able to do. For that reason, we would like to emphasize 21st century skills list, many researchers have come to.
The first set of the necessary skills to be mentioned are “4Cs” learning skills which are: Critical thinking, Creativity, Collaboration and Communication (Chiruguru, 2020; Halvorsen A., 2018).
Endless flows and variety of sources of information issued every day to the world demand to analyze it and check if it is truthful and reliable enough to make adequate decisions. Also, it is hard to imagine problems solving process without looking at them from different points of view and using cross-disciplinary approach, which refer to critical thinking. In order to exchange and share information effectively, create new senses and concepts, modern people should be really good communicators (offline and online), which means not only presenting information, but gathering it in a proper way. For this reason, in multinational societies and teams better understanding other people and cultures is another key skill, as well as ability to collaborate and be an effective team-member in order to reach a goal. In such collaboration with other creators, new products and ideas become the consistent result.
So, a critical thinker and problems solver with developed communication and collaboration skills, who is able to create new ideas, products and senses is the very outcome education should be aiming to produce by the end of the studying process. More than that, this person is a life-long-learner, who’s able to self-develop respectively to the variety of situations.
Another aspect of 21st century skills related to the fact of informational era continuation, which makes people to have at least basic Information, Media and Technology literacy skills. Information literacy involves ability to understand, remember, analyze, evaluate, apply and create information. Consuming and producing information in different ways are inevitable skills that people should have nowadays. Media literacy means understanding the ways of producing and distributing the information (including such new forms as social networks, podcasts, blogs and vlogs). To realize the previously mentioned opportunities given by informational revolution one should be able to use the newest technological updates (web sites, search engines, virtual worlds, wikis, message boards etc.)
Combination of the previously listed learning and literacy skills together with flexibility, agility and adaptation attitudes as well as leadership and initiative are essential in fast-changing and unpredictable social and economic reality.
And new expected outcomes of studying suppose new approaches to educational process. That is why sagacious educational institutions have already implemented Project Based Learning (PBL) as the way to achieve the necessary skills development. For increasing the effectiveness of PBL it can be used mixed with Game Based Learning (GBL) which can add new positive results for educational process.
The general purpose of the research is to prove the positive contribution of PBL and GBL to the students’ performance, therefore structure of the paper was divided into the following steps:
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Describing the skills needed to be trained by modern education;
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Analyzing PBL as the instrument of developing the mentioned skills;
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Discovering possible additional impact of mixing PBL with elements of GBL;
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Comparing the students’ performance before and after using GBL to prove the positive impact PBL and GBL on students’ results.