Transforming didactic environment into a role game. Classcraft a digital platform for school

Two of the main obstacles against school learning are willingness to participate and lack of an aim different from marks, or inability to see them. Can gamification or game-based learning act in this sense? Can they successfully transform classroom environment? Classcraft is an online platform of augmented reality with the purpose of changing the whole class ecosystem into a role game. According to what emerges from the scoping review, Classcraft satisfies conditions of optimal gamification learning experiences, considering gamified reward mechanics, interactive settings, and collaborative tasks. Although these are popular topics in recent years all over the world, there aren’t specific studies outlining the effects of this platform on Italian middle school. This study adopts a qualitative design with a pre-test and post-test scheme, interviews to some significant students, descriptive analysis, and discussion of results. The beta-test confirms positive results observed in other studies: “when Classcraft is played, the classroom is not a classroom anymore”. The transformation of school environment is about autotelic motivation to participate. The player (the student) cocreates the world and doesn’t just passively consume it. Cooperation (not competition) and inclusion generate virtuous circles which lead even to evaluations growth and multiplicate the possibility of experiment the ideal state of flow. Literature review outlines that professors have a crucial role in the whole process. Future perspectives about the study seek for enlarging the sample considered, involving professors and classrooms from different background in Lombardy to obtain a higher amount of data and being able to confront them.