As the PIAAC study has shown, the skill of “problem solving in technology-rich environments” is low among adults in EU. This skill is further defined as a combination of managing different basic skills, being literacy, numeracy and ICT skills. Our aim in the Skill up Game project is to introduce gamification and experience education to trainers of low skilled adults. As these methods support a natural way of learning, we believe they are specifically useful when working with groups that are generally more difficult to motivate and involve in the learning process.

As a part of an initial analysis of the project, we have delivered focus groups with educators from all partner countries (Czech Republic, Ireland, Lithuania, Slovenia, Spain), gathering an opinion of a total of 31 education professionals. In this article, I am sharing what arose from the focus groups as the main obstacles to the usage of gamification in education, as well as how we tackled them in the project, mainly speaking about the methodology we have created for trainers on how to use gamification in training of low skilled adult learners.

Firstly, from the result of the focus group discussions, it is clear that educators have different levels of understanding of the term gamification. Usually trainers have some experience with games but often not gamification in the sense of introducing different game elements during the training itself, like story, leaderboards, avatars, mystery boxes etc., which are not full games, but their elements that help to keep the trainees motivated and focused. In order to help the educators to be really able to use gamification in their trainings, in the methodology we are introducing our top 10 gamification elements with further explanations, that are quite easy to apply and we have a great experience with them from our trainings.

Secondly, we needed to find a solution to the fact, that readers of our methodology will be working with very different target groups of learners. Trainers are encountering people coming from very different backgrounds and having very different needs. As a solution we decided not to be too specific when it comes to particular training suggestions, but rather give the educators tools that will help them adapt suggested methods to their specific contexts. A full chapter is dedicated to  the role of a trainer, where we have also included a tool to create a participants' persona, that helps to better understand participants’ behaviour and expectations when planning a training.

Thirdly, what came out of the focus groups as a repetitive problem is, that if the educators are using games in their trainings, they usually know only a few, which they keep using all over again. What they would really appreciate is a database with educational games. In order to support the educators, on the top of sharing our examples of educational games that can be used when training adults on the topic of literacy, numeracy and ICT skills, we have decided to also collect favourite games of our expert educators from all five countries and put them together, resulting in a collection of 44 games and activities (see the link below).

The mission of our company Mise HERo is to create a place for the children of our children. We truly believe, that greater implementation of gamification and experience education into the national educational will help to create the place that we envision and that thanks to the Skill up Game project we are one step further on our journey. If you are interested in the topic, check out the intellectual outputs of the project, that available on our web page.

MOOC platform: https://skillup-game.eu

Downloadable materials: http://misehero.cz/skillup-game/