Accessibility of Kahoot! And Quizizz: Utilizing Educational Games with Elderly Students

Abstract

Learning is a lifelong process and the ways of learning and teaching have been changing in recent years, reform traditional classroom teaching to interactive, entertaining, and engaging teaching. Recent years have shown the popularity of educational games as a pedagogical method for children and youth in particular. Games are often employed to engage, inspire and motivate learners, as well as to support teachers in delivering various pedagogical content. Learning and teaching methods are in the transition phase. However, only scarce literature exists on the utilization of educational games with older adults and the elderly. Additionally, the understanding of how accessible educational games are for the senior citizens is still limited. Educational games are often utilized in classrooms, next to traditional teaching methods. In such situations, the accessibility of a whole gaming session must be taken into consideration to ensure inclusion. It is thought that there are general barriers to their use of (game) technology such as psychological apprehension of technology, as well as physiological barriers, e.g., visual, hearing and other bodily impairments. Hence, this article examines the utilization of the educational games of Kahoot! and Quizizz, as well as their perceived accessibility with elderly students. Through surveys and observational data gathered from 27 participants in four different sessions, the results point to several issues in terms of accessibility, game tempo, as well as issues related to the classroom space design, such as lighting and size of the board on which the games are projected. However, similar to younger audiences, the elderly appears eager to engage with educational games, especially with appropriate game design and facilities.