The audiovisual knowledge pill as a gamification strategy in second language online courses

Abstract

This article discusses the impact of the incorporation of Voki recordings into the virtual courses of a series of foreign language subjects (namely: English, German, French, and Italian) on the English Studies and Tourism degrees at UNED, the Spanish national distance university, whose formal courses are all fundamentally online. It is argued by the authors that in an essentially text-only learning environment like the virtual courses in the institutional e-Learning platform aLF, particularly for foreign language learning subjects, introducing informative audiovisual pills with a gamification component, such as those provided by the Vokitool, would improve both the dynamics and the students’ perception of the virtual courses. This article presents the students’ view on this issue, the process of designing and implementing Vokisto deliver methodological and epistemological information within the context of the virtual courses of foreign languages, and the effect and the impression of the whole experiment caused on the students who took part in it.