Best Practice

Using Minecraft Education Edition in Distance Learning

The use of games in learning is an excellent way to use constructivist pedagogies through an active and participatory approach to the teaching process. These use a wide variety of techniques to ensure engagement and keep students immersed. Minecraft Education Edition is an example of how digital learning tools based on Game-Based Learning are transforming and developing ways of teaching. The game assumes high complexity and amplitude, being a "cubic world" in which players aim to build static representations of the real world, found on a catalog of different types of blocks. It also assumes the concept of server-based multiplayer, enabling interaction (collaboration) in a virtual environment, where imagination is the limit. The project presented is entitled “Using Minecraft Education Edition in Distance Learning”, and had as its main objective the construction of a monument/symbolic place in Lisbon in Minecraft Education Edition. The pedagogical objective was to construct a monument/place in Minecraft Education Edition where the trainee reviews, builds, develops and systematizes knowledge about geometry. This project had its run, in 2021, at the Geometry and Trigonometry Training Unit, with a workload of 50 hours. First, the trainer worked the contents with students in a more theoretical way, through a brief review, since concepts had already been worked on, in previous years. Then the class was proposed to create the place or monument, through the game. To make things happen, the class was divided into groups of 4/5 students and each one chose the monument/place they would work on. The training model was completely online, since the trainer was located in Oporto and the trainees in Palmela (about 350 km away). The trainer acted as a tutor, since the trainees were building their own knowledge, needing only occasional support. The groups were divided into rooms in Microsoft Teams, which was also the communication tool used by everyone. The tutor's easy access to each room also allowed for agile management of each group. The evaluation of the work was done continuously. Multiple checkpoints were created throughout the project, in which students, through MS Forms, submitted status reports. Before finishing, each group presented the project to their colleagues, which provided exchange and sharing of learning between them.

Game-based learning Group work

Level 4 students

Mathematics

Teamwork, communication, cooperation, creative thinking, problem solving, computational thinking, geometry and trigonometry

tiago.goncalves@atec.pt