Transforming a school into Hogwarts: storification of classrooms and students’ social behaviour

A Friend to Milli Mörriäinen

“…In general, storification refers to utilising stories more comprehensively to communicate a narrative in a more intriguing and immersive way (Akkerman et al, 2009) or to create a fictional or nonfictional storied environment for more traditional learning activities (Deterding, 2016). Furthermore, storied environments and activities create a shared interest and a positive social atmosphere among pupils and teachers (Aura et al, 2023). According to several studies (Aura et al, 2021;Dickey, 2011), a well-composed storification creates a classroom drama that sparks suspense, sustained engagement and curiosity, which is a perquisite for exploration and the motivation to learn.…”

Effects of Gamification on Motivations of Elementary School Students: An Action Research Field Experiment

“…However, it remains that the majority of current research is primarily western-centric, providing limited insights on the reception of gamification in, for example, Middle Eastern and developing countries, as well as which gamification designs / elements would resonate most with students in different cultures. Furthermore, gamification can be particularly valuable in educational contexts characterized by limited resources and classroom management challenges, as is often the case in developing countries (Aura et al, 2021a), where classrooms are significantly big, and the ratio of students to teachers is high. Gamification, compared to serious games, can be particularly easier and quicker to implement, giving it a slight advantage in contexts with limited resources, if it is indeed able to positively impact learning sustainably.…”

“…This is especially true while presenting scientific concepts to primary school pupils as students at that age may not always understand the relevance of the material they are learning and may need additional support to connect it to real-world experiences. Traditional didactic methods are not necessarily compatible with the nature of these scientific concepts, nor the nature of this century, and many pupils tend to find it challenging to grasp these concepts or perceive their importance (Aura et al, 2021a; Botha & Herselman, 2015). The resulting lack of motivation and engagement can lead to difficulty in understanding and retaining information thereby leading to failure in attaining the desired educational goals and a poor acquisition of scientific concepts, as has been confirmed by the pilot study which was a part of this research.…”

“…The resulting lack of motivation and engagement can lead to difficulty in understanding and retaining information thereby leading to failure in attaining the desired educational goals and a poor acquisition of scientific concepts, as has been confirmed by the pilot study which was a part of this research. Previous studies have explored simplifying education content, learning exercises, matching demand levels to student skills and more, through the use of different emerging game-based methods, including games, fantasy, gamification (Aura et al, 2022; Freina and Ott, 2015; Majuri et al, 2018) serious games (Ullah et al, 2022), game-based learning (Pan et al, 2021), storification, playfulness (Järvelä et al, 2022), and many such labels .…”

“…The educational landscape is rapidly changing, and utilizing modern teaching approaches and techniques reinforced by ICT can facilitate active learning and new pedagogical paradigms. Gamification is one of such approaches that in recent years, has become a trend in not only education (Aura et al, 2022; Majuri et al, 2018), but in production (Wrmelink et al, 2018), business and management (Vesa et al, 2017) and even government communication (Harviainen & Hassan, 2019; Hassan et al, 2019), just to name but a few application areas.…”