Educators spend a lot of time designing lesson plans that engage students and deliver lessons that stick with them. It’s not always easy. Many students have different learning needs, and not all lesson plans provide stimulating learning environments for every student.
As teaching methods have evolved, the profound benefits of edutainment learning have been proven to deliver time after time. But what is edutainment and why is it such an effective way of learning?
What Is Edutainment?
You can probably guess just by saying the word aloud that edutainment is a portmanteau of the words education and entertainment. Edutainment learning combines these two worlds in ways that are fun and memorable. By engaging students in activities that stimulate both sides of their brains, they are more likely to engage in those activities and retain the information taught. Thus, the way content is delivered is equally important as the content itself.
Now that you’re familiar with the basic edutainment definition, let’s look at why it is such an effective means of teaching.
Why Edutainment Learning Is Effective
Believe it or not, edutainment has been an effective way of teaching for a very long time. Humans have always learned important life lessons through play, because learning through doing is more effective when we are having fun.
A study published by the National Institute of Health has shown that emotion has a substantial influence on the cognitive processes in humans, including perception, attention, learning, memory, reasoning, and problem solving. When we experience joy with any experience, our brain is better equipped to retain and recall the content of that experience. We are primed to absorb events surrounding it, and when others are involved, we often talk about the experience together, further cementing it in our brains.
By designing lessons that incorporate the aid of edutainment learning activities, students get more out of their learning experiences. There are a number of effective means of incorporating edutainment in our lesson plans.
Edutainment Learning Activities
Edutainment learning activities can involve anything that merges education and entertainment. Whether that involves participating in individual pursuits like educational video games or more interactive activities like live theater and livestreams, these activities reinforce traditional teaching techniques with creative thinking and socialization. Here are some of the more effective edutainment examples for teaching complex material.
Story-Based Videos and Television Shows
Most of us are familiar with Sesame Street. It was one of the first successful edutainment programs to reach the masses in a meaningful way. The series was created to grab and hold the attention of young viewers, teaching them basic life skills along the way. Story-based learning has proven to be an incredibly sticky form of edutainment, teaching lessons that children remember well into adulthood. The effective way Sesame Street combined education and entertainment led to the development of thousands of new programs built around learning and child development.
Live Theatre Performances
Live theater performances are one of the most effective ways we can incorporate immersive storytelling into modern lesson plans. Utilizing a variety of story-based learning techniques is invaluable because it can help us retain vastly more information than we would through lectures alone. In fact, research by psychologist Jerome Bruner suggests that facts may be 20 times more likely to be remembered when they are woven into a story.
Story-based learning is a powerful tool that is leveraged by edutainment activities of all types, and one that live theater leverages inherently. Live theater combines interactive edutainment learning with socialization like few other activities can. Here’s how.
Unlike videos, live theater allows students to interact with one another and the storytellers in real time to drive home lessons. Questions are asked and answered through thoughtful content. Students find it easy to engage and they enjoy themselves, and that can allow them to retain much more of the lessons being taught. After the performance, students speak with each other about what they just saw and what they got out of it. Live theater is second to none when it comes to delivering active learning engagement.
Interactive Livestreams
Another edutainment learning activity that garners great results is the interactive livestream. This delivery method differs from pre-recorded video in that students absorb the story through real-time, interactive experiences rather than simply watching the story unfold. It’s like a hybrid of video and live theater performance.
Interactive experiences are an important part of the learning journey. Eric Mazur, Balkanski Professor of Physics and Applied Physics at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, found that active learning resulted in more engaged students, and that their learning gains increased exponentially as a result of this type of instruction. It also made sleeping through class a practical impossibility.
Through livestreams, we can bring experts into the classroom for interactive media experiences that they get to share with their friends. Interactive livestreams can vastly increase the tools a teacher has available by giving them the ability to work with experts from around the globe.
Gamification
Turning group activities into interactive games delivers big benefits. By introducing game elements like badge or token systems, rewards, or reaching higher levels, we can motivate students in their learning journeys. Setting achievable goals and rewarding students for a job well done can be big motivators leading to significant performance improvement, and can be applied to all kinds of activities.
Toys
Very early in our lives, much of our learning comes in the form of educational toys. We learn basic shapes, colors, and animals through playing with simple toys. As we grow, we move on to more advanced toys like Legos, which can increase creativity and reasoning, alongside motor and engineering skills. The spatial recognition and visualization skills required to build complex block structures prepares us with essential skills needed in adulthood through simple play. Today, you can find a broad range of toys that develop important life skills in students.
Video Games
Over the past fifty years or so, video games have become a staple in the entertainment diet of millions of children. In the years since, games have become more advanced, and are now being built around complex storylines and puzzles. Those advancements have made video games a popular means of incorporating edutainment learning into lesson plans. They are effective supplements to traditional lesson plans, but often lack the socialization aspect that allows for the deeper learning inherent in edutainment activities.
Edutainment Learning Is for All Ages
Youth are not the only beneficiaries of educational entertainment. Edutainment plays an important role in continuing education and community outreach as well. It has been proven effective in engaging learners of all ages and backgrounds, making edutainment learning activities an invaluable tool in every situation from job development to community education.
Maximizing Edutainment Opportunities
We have seen how powerful interactive, educational learning experiences can be in the development of young minds. Some schools have the means to implement these programs into their curricula, and some don’t. Support from the community is the great equalizer.
Sponsoring a program through an education outreach company that specializes in edutainment learning is a highly effective and resource-efficient way to provide students in your community the tools they need to succeed, as well as generate a love of learning that lasts a lifetime. NTC Corporate offers programs that present vetted and proven edutainment learning opportunities directly into the institution.
If you are interested in learning more about NTC Corporate’s education outreach programming, contact us to see how you can incorporate edutainment into your outreach strategies.
