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Teaching the European Union through Game-Based Learning

Teach the EU through play, with video games, Minecraft and interactive fiction your students will enjoy.

About 3 hours

5 lessons

Self-paced

Free

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A self-paced course for primary and secondary teachers who want to bring games into their lessons on the European Union: the principles of game-based learning, and practical ways to use video and board games, Minecraft and interactive fiction in class.

What you will learn

  • Understand the key principles and benefits of game-based learning, and how it differs from gamification and other uses of video games
  • Plan a game-based activity on EU content, from choosing the game to bringing it into the classroom
  • Use Minecraft to let students build, explore and learn about the EU together in a virtual world
  • Read, evaluate and write interactive fiction, and design lessons in which students explore European countries, history and values through branching stories

About this course

Games, and video games in particular, play a huge role in young people’s lives. Game-based learning turns that interest into a resource: it uses the power of games to engage players in complex tasks and make learning fun, interactive and effective. Unlike gamification, which adds game elements to traditional lessons, game-based learning lets students learn by playing.

This course shows how game-based learning can bring the European Union, its institutions and values, and European history and cultural heritage into your classroom. After an introduction to the principles of GBL, you will explore two approaches in depth: Minecraft, a virtual world in which students build and learn together, and interactive fiction, text-based games that develop reading, writing, critical thinking and problem solving. Basic digital skills are enough to follow the course, although some of the tools it suggests take a little practice.

Course content

5 lessons · about 3 hours

The course is organised in three topics, which you can follow in any order. Each topic combines short texts and videos with practical examples, including a building activity in Minecraft, three sample interactive fictions to read and a quiz to check your learning. A final collection of resources, with lesson plans created by teachers, helps you take the ideas further.

  • 20% Video Short lessons with your trainer
  • 20% Exercises Quizzes and activities to try
  • 60% Slides Presentations and readings
  1. 1 Welcome to the Course! 1 topicLocked
  2. 2 1. Introduction to Game-Based-Learning 4 topicsLocked
  3. 3 2. Minecraft – Between Constructionism and GBL 5 topicsLocked
  4. 4 3. Teaching EU-Content with Interactive Fiction 10 topicsLocked
  5. 5 Conclusion 1 topicLocked

The lessons open once you are enrolled.

Your trainer

Riccardo Manni

Riccardo Manni

Teacher trainer in Florence

Riccardo trains teachers in Florence on digital tools and game-based learning, from Minecraft and gamebooks to 3D printing and Moodle. He also teaches Italian at Europass Italian Language School.

  • Master’s degree in Modern Philology, University of Florence, with a thesis on teaching Italian as a language
  • Bachelor’s degree in Communication Sciences, University of Florence
  • Author of the in-person course Gamifying the Classroom with Minecraft, Gamebooks and Treasure Hunts
  • At Europass since 2019

Created with Marco Fenici within EU-TEAM – European Teachers on the Move, a project co-funded by the European Union.

Your certificate

Complete all the lessons and your certificate of completion is generated automatically, ready to download as a PDF.

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