Welcome to the Playful Activity Library! We invite you to explore this curated collection of active, playful activities designed for use in adult education settings. This library supports our playful learning community by showcasing inspiring practices, sparking new ideas, and encouraging collaborative connections. We welcome all forms of playful approaches—whether it’s a quick icebreaker, a creative classroom activity, or a fully developed board game. Whatever your contribution, we’d love for you to share it with the community!
What is it? An educational (analogue) game to teach research skills.
Who is it for? Postgraduate students who are doing independent research projects.
Why use this game? Research skills are hard to teach in a motivating and memorable way. This game is fun and it works!
Research skills are challenging to teach in a way that is meaningful to students and has ongoing impact in their research practice. Constructivist and experiential strategies are shown to be effective for learning and deep understanding of postgraduate research skills. A range of research shows that Game-Based Learning can be a memorable and effective approach to teaching high-level, functional learning outcomes such as academic research skills.
There are four cognitive learning outcomes. After playing this game, students should be able to:
1) Understand the various risks affecting research and their impact on projects
2) Recognise dependencies between tasks at different stages of research
3) Understand the interrelations of different risks with the activities to negate or mitigate them
4) Be aware of the time-critical nature of short research projects
There are also emotional and behavioural learning outcomes: breaking the fear of failure common in postgraduate student research; teamwork and collaborative learning; and encouraging students to really take ownership over risk management within their projects.
Daisy Abbott
The Glasgow School Of Art
Social Profile
Small (30 or less)
Interaction, Risk and Reward, Goals
Exploring, Creating, Sharing, Reflecting
Free to use and adapt