Play to get Instant Feedback – Using Game-Based Apps to Overcome the Feedback Gap in Lectures and Online Teaching

COVID-19 accelerated the digital transformation in education worldwide. Within a short time frame of several weeks, a full digital transformation took place. In the meantime, however, the trend of this rapid digital transformation seems to be reverting and rolling back to face-to-face teaching and traditional teaching methods. In this article, we aim to show that digital teaching approaches cannot be exclusive to online teaching but should be considered important even after returning to face-to-face teaching. In particular, we focus on improving feedback in large-scale educational settings. We observe that providing and receiving appropriate feedback on learning and teaching activities is challenging independent of the specific teaching setting (in-class or online). This is particularly problematic because feedback is essential in the learning processes. To address this, we combine the concepts of learning analytics and gamification to design a lecture game app that can be used (1) to motivate students to participate in formative assessments, (2) to collect learning-related data, and (3) to analyze this data to provide instant feedback. After integrating the lecture game in different settings, we conclude that digital tools can be useful independent of the specific learning setting.