Gather.Town: a gamification tool to promote engagement and establish online learning communities for language learners

Xin Zhao; Colin Derek McClure

doi:10.1177/00336882221097216

Gather.Town: a gamification tool to promote engagement and establish online learning communities for language learners

Xin Zhao, Colin Derek McClure^*

^*Corresponding author for this work

School of Biological Sciences

Research output: Contribution to journal › Review article › peer-review

19 Citations (Scopus)

139 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

The use of virtual learning communities has shown great potential for language education. Research suggests that video-conferencing technology can assist teachers in creating such communities for second-language teaching. Gather.Town is a gamified, video-conferencing platform that revolutionizes the traditional static video-conferencing experience for language learners. It provides users with a 2D map with avatar-based game features utilizing proximity-based video-conferencing functionality which enhance student online engagement and promote interaction that resembles real-life conditions. Gather.Town has received increasing attention from educational researchers since its launch in May 2020; however, its adoption in language classrooms has not yet been explored. This review paper aims to introduce Gather.Town to language teachers and researchers to enhance student engagement in virtual learning communities.

Original language	English
Number of pages	6
Journal	RELC Journal
Early online date	09 May 2022
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1177/00336882221097216
Publication status	Early online date - 09 May 2022

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10.1177/00336882221097216Licence: CC BY

Gather.Town: a gamification tool to promote engagement and establish online learning communities for language learners
Copyright 2022 the authors. This is an open access article published under a Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the author and source are cited.
Final published version, 1.88 MBLicence: CC BY

Cite this

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Gather.Town: a gamification tool to promote engagement and establish online learning communities for language learners

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