Staff Reporter
Have you noticed how young generations of students started demanding fresh ideas and new learning models? We are sure you have because there seems to be a huge shift in how colleges approach their demands in an attempt to refresh their curriculums as well as methodologies. It leads to a brand new concept called edutainment, and we are going to discuss it in great detail here.
The Concept of Edutainment in a Nutshell
Edutainment is exactly what it sounds like: A unique blend of education and entertainment. In a way, this is how schools and colleges can pair learning with fun so as to design a much more engaging environment. In such circumstances, students are more prone to really embrace academic content because it comes in a more relaxed format.
The whole idea of this concept is to make things easier for everyone. It reminds us a lot of EduBirdie, an online academic writing assistance that also creates unique services to help students out. When I personally want someone to write an essay for me, I will turn to this writing service to help me get from raw ideas to A+. The best part is that everything takes place in a very engaging environment with many rounds of feedback.
That’s also the purpose of edutainment – to convince students that learning can be fun if they approach it from the right angle. It’s all about interaction since lecturers now want to avoid dull lessons delivered ex cathedra.
Bear in mind that this isn’t about dumbing down education or making it frivolous. On the contrary, it is all about adapting to how students today consume information. This mainly has to do with much shorter attention spans since digital media dominates the content landscape.
The UK Is Trying to Do It on a National LevelDon’t think edutainment is exclusive to certain colleges only. On the contrary, some countries do it on a much broader level already. Take the United Kingdom as an example – this country completed an entire research called Implementation of education technology in schools and colleges so as to discover how to introduce edutainment to the classrooms. They used this research to better understand how new education technology can be embedded in colleges. |
How Does Technology-Driven Edutainment Work?
The main reason why we are talking about edutainment in 2024 (and not in 1984, for instance) is that new technologies make this whole concept possible. As a matter of fact, technology-driven edutainment is where things really start to get exciting because it leads to some truly astounding results. These technologies make for interactive experiences, and that’s exactly what a young scholar wants to see these days.
Let’s break it down.
Imagine you’re a biology student going through a new lesson about the human body: Instead of just flipping through pages of diagrams, what if you could actually “enter” the human body using Virtual Reality? That’s fairly easy if you possess a decent headset – it will quickly take you through a virtual exploration of the bloodstream or organs exactly as they function in real-time. Needless to say, this is some serious improvement compared to traditional college learning models that exclusively relied on pens and paper books. However, it doesn’t take advanced technology to make edutainment possible – almost every college can do it simply by adding popular YouTube educators to the curriculum. Take the CrashCourse channel as an example – they already have more than 15 million subscribers thanks to amazing educators who can turn literally any topic into a truly entertaining piece of video content.
Practical Benefits of Edutainment
Another thing we ought to add is that edutainment isn’t just about making learning more fun: It’s also about delivering some really tangible benefits that add a solid layer of extra quality to the overall learning experience. Here are just a few highly practical benefits:
- This combo of education and entertainment keeps students interested in courses
- It helps young people better absorb information
- Edutainment encourages active participation
- It makes education more accessible since most things can be done online
- The concept can be used for collaboration purposes
The Bottom Line
With that said, we should only add that edutainment opens up an endless field of fresh opportunities to immerse students in their studies. Yes, colleges with still require hard work, but this learning approach will make it a lot simpler for young scholars. That’s a huge win-win situation because students will have a better time learning while colleges will have better students.
AUTHOR BIO
James Hughey is an academic researcher with a serious interest in new learning engagement models. He is interested in all things college, but mainly how to keep students interested in courses in a playful manner. Apart from that, James spends most of his free time on long bike rides.
