Abstract

The use of games in education is not a new concept. This study was informed by game-based practices, focusing on Sheldon’s idea of a ‘multiplayer classroom’. This study focuses on 74 students (divided into a control group and a manipulated group) from a boys’ secondary school in Malta.  Elements from games such as challenge, rewards, role-play, and teamwork will be implemented in two classes (during weekly Information Communication Technology (ICT) lessons) to create ‘Multiplayer classrooms’ based on Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games (MMORPG). MMORPGs motivate players by rewarding positive actions, so ‘experience points’ (XP) were rewarded to students for positive actions including completing syllabus based tasks while ‘hit points’ (HP) were deducted for negative actions. Students were able to monitor their progress (XP) and achievements (badges) online via personalised profile pages.  Observations during lessons were recorded in an online blog and students completed questionnaires and took part in semi-structured interviews. The purposes of this study were to inform my own teaching and to explore whether through these manipulations student motivation, engagement and collaboration would increase and negative trends would decrease.

After much consideration, I decided that, due to the nature of the study, I would present my study as a hyperlinked web-resource in order to facilitate access to the blog, where I recorded my observations, and the website used during the multiplayer classroom, as well as a mock profile for readers^[1]See Appendix 1.