Online Learning and Fun is a  large-scale research project  whose  aims is to examine learners’ views about fun in learning supported by technologies in Higher Education. Due to the COVID-19 virus pandemic, many schools and universities  have adapted their curriculum to promote online learning. Consequently, understanding factors that influence learners’ engagement and enjoyment with online studies has been foregrounded for many educators, and their students, for the first time. In this new context, being responsive to students’ views about their learning and fun is an important part of developing online pedagogies that might support learner well-being. (Okada, 2020). Objectives OLAF  project  has three objectives:

1. to refine a self-reflective instrument for  generating a large database;

2. to cocreate a set of recommendations for innovating pedagogical practices;

3. to increase the number of research studies about fun in learning for promoting changes in the educational curriculum, practices and policies.

It is coordinated by Dr. Okada (PI) and Prof. Sheehy (Co-I)

Methodology

This mixed method study will  refine a self-reflective instrument about fun and online learning on both contexts:  formal education and non-formal education, which will be useful for developing institutional, inter-institutional and cross-national studies during the pandemic. This instrument was designed to increase students’ awareness about their epistemic beliefs, engagement with online learning, and views about fun in distance education.

Our findings will be used to provide recommendations to teaching staff, curriculum designers and project teams to support students’ enjoyment with learning enhanced by technologies. Our purpose is also to create opportunities for research groups to  investigate new strategies to enrich online learning experiences in various contexts supported by innovative pedagogies, such as gamification, virtual and augmented reality, 360-annotation, story-animation, datification, inquiry mapping and open schooling projects.

We are using a self-reflective instrument to generate data with:

Our study was approved by The Open University’s Human Research Ethics Committee and the project approval ID is HREC/3463.

Previous studies

This instrument was previously applied to a study within an Open University module with 4500 students; 630 participants; 551 respondents.  Findings  indicated that 91% of participants valued fun in online learning; highlighting well-being, motivation and performance. However, 17% believed that fun within learning could take the focus off their studies and result in distraction.

Funder

The Open University

Partners