Engagement and Literacy through Quest-Based Learning
by Tara Kingsley and Melissa Graber-Hagen
“Engagement isn’t a thing, it’s the only thing.”
Christopher Lehman, author and literacy advocate
Introduction
Classroom engagement involves academic curiosity, perseverance despite challenges, and both satisfaction and passion for the task at hand. According to research, engagement plays a key role in student learning. The benefits of student engagement include increased academic performance, persistence and grit, and improved social skills. Yet, research also shows that with each passing year of schooling, student engagement decreases. This drop is in fact monumental, according to the Gallup Student Poll, with only 16% of juniors stating that they “have fun” at school.
Academic standards include reading, writing, listening, and speaking for all grade levels and across each content area; thus, all teachers are teachers of literacy. The question is, how to engage students, meet academic literacy standards, and promote joy in learning? How do we, as teachers, help students feel as though they want to learn more and persevere through academic challenges? Gameplay, or quest-based, learning is one approach to tap into student interest while simultaneously targeting literacy.
Turn educational lessons into a game by designing lessons as quests. A quest is a class lesson, activity, or assignment that has been turned into a challenge or game. Gameplay through quest-based learning offers opportunities to teach literacy in new, authentic ways. The power of play in instruction and learning has long been supported by cognitive psychologists including Piaget and Vygotsky. In this article, we explain how to shift lessons into questing gameplay for the added advantage of student engagement.
Understanding Quest-Based Learning
Turning lessons into quests is called quest-based learning (QBL). Questing is an important part of role-playing games in which characters explore worlds and solve problems to gain abilities, powers, and achievements, and a key structure of quest design is engagement. Quests utilize the mechanics of gameplay and stories to bring learners into the game or adventure, thus, making students active learners. Quest-based learning design starts with the consideration of what skills and knowledge should be mastered and when these should be taught for a certain topic. The content lessons become quests for students to conquer. To promote active learning, the quest design should be challenging for the students, not simple. Students solve problems to learn class material. As described in detail below, a thematic story is created that relates to the topic being taught. The story serves to create a structure for learning the material and for keeping the student interested in learning. Next, we share how to create QBL that supports literacy learning and student engagement.
54