TESTIMONIAL - NATHALIE SCERRI
St. Theresa Secondary school is part of St. Theresa College, led by the principal Mr Victor Agius. The school has been involved in projects that include cooperation and collaboration with foreign schools for the past eight years. The projects have been coordinated by two teachers, also involved in the eConfidence project.
The eConfidence serious games helped both students and staff to gain a better insight on the importance of introducing such tools in the learning process. Apart from being a modern approach, that enhances students' attention, the most important benefit was that each student learnt at its own pace. The involved topics are delicate and affect students in different ways. Both games allowed each student to play, experiment and gain knowledge according to their required needs.
We can safely say that different students learned the desired knowledge in an interactive and fun way. School of Empathy dealt with situations of bullying that our students encounter regularly. Students responded differently to situations created in the game with some of them getting emotionally involved. The game led them to give different responses according to the presented situation, leading them to learn the best approach to that situation.
The Online Safety game dealt with actual activities found online. Students got a holistic knowledge on how to add friends on social media, how to create passwords and avoid viruses. From our interaction with the students, we think that serious games combine entertainment and knowledge in an efficient way. During a session, around 15 students played at the same time. I would say that perhaps the biggest challenge was to control students from influencing each other in certain decisions taken. Serious games can be useful in Personal and Social Development lessons and teachers of those subjects should introduce them in their lesson plans. If the games were available at our school, we are sure that members of the staff would be interested in using them. As coordinator of eConfidence in my school, I think that using serious games can help students be more motivated, and in the long run more effective in the learning process.