by David Thomas
Rarely do you find academics willing to seriously think about fun, much less publish about it. But in their pursuit to find ways to make learning more engaging, authors Nicola Whitton & Mark Langan have produced a fine piece of scholarship both summarizing some of the big themes in fun in higher ed as well as suggesting some interesting possibilities for future study.
In “Fun and games in higher education: an analysis of UK student perspectives” Whitton and Langan propose five themes they distilled from interviewing 37 students about fun and learning: stimulating pedagogy; lecturer engagement; a safe learning space; shared experience; and a low-stress environment. The bulk of the paper details these findings and shows the complex ways that play and fun can support meaningful learning.
The paper is worth a read for any Professor at Play. It’s insights are many and it provides quite a bit of fuel for the playful fires we discuss in this network. For example, the lit review in the paper starts out with a clarifying claim:
“The role of fun in childhood education, particularly early childhood, is uncontroversial. Learning through play is accepted to support learning, imagination, and creativity, but as learners progress through formal, education, a greater emphasis is put on performance and measurable outcomes, and the relationship between fun and education becomes detached.”
Why this happens and what we can do about it is touched on in the paper. But the real value in the research is teasing out what students actually think. The N might be small, but for my money, I bet you’d find similar outcomes in your classes.
Fun is fundamental, and this kind of research into the nature of fun and learning both helps set guideposts for future exploration and adds to the small, but growing scholarship that underlies the Professor at Play belief in the transformational power of play, games, fun, joy and wonder in the higher educational setting.
You can find the paper here: