ACTIVE LEARNING & ICT-ENHANCED TEACHING: M-LEARNING AND GAMIFICATION

YSU participants included Assistant Professor of the Faculty of Romance and Germanic Philology Diana Bagaryan, Associate Professor of the Faculty of Law Anna Margaryan, Associate Professor of Social Sciences Nvard Melkonyan, and Associate Professor of the Philosophy and Psychology Department Silva Petrosyan.

During one week of intensive trainings, the ERASMUS + PRINTEL representatives from partner universities of Armenia, Georgia and Belarus held discussions on how active learning can support students’ learning experience, planned a gamified learning intervention, reflected different aspects of the use of mobile devices with their potential and limitations and designed tasks with different apps for active learning.

In the process of training on" ACTIVE LEARNING & ICT-ENHANCED TEACHING: m-learning & gamification", the participants were introduced to the innovative methodologies, techniques and special tools used in the University of Barcelona, tried various digital applications and programs (Canva, Slido, Mentimeter, Kahoot, Spark Video, etc.), the use of which made the training more inspiring, memorable and instructive for the audience.

It has been efficiently illustrated that integration of gamification technique in the educational process along with the use of smartphones (m-learning) can serve as a powerful tool for driving user engagement, increasing motivation and creativity through the application of gaming mechanics or video game design elements in learning environments.

The trainees also visited the VR EVENT LAB of the University of Barcelona, where they had a chance to introduce themselves in the realms of virtual reality to experience and understand the potential of constructing and teaching special historical events with the help of VR tools (the virtual reality episode was devoted to V. Lenin's 1920 public speech).

Based on the conclusions of the training participants, it has become obvious that today the integration of modern technologies into teaching processes has become a necessary precondition for ensuring the student competitiveness in the international educational and labor market. And in this context, it is important to collect experiences related to the transformation of the methodology and provide opportunities for implementing the above mentioned innovations.

The final day of the course was devoted to the participants’ presentations of their final product in the format of PechaKucha illustrating their own insights on the use of techniques of M-learning and Gamification in the fields of their specialization. The course was concluded by the final course evaluation survey.