Does Making Learning Fun Make Good For Learning?

Does making learning fun make good for learning?

According to Woolfolk ‘s research, when many beginning teachers are asked about how to motivate students, they often mention making learning fun. But is it necessary for learning to be fun? Making learning fun is a tool used to make it interesting, a “seductive detail” to catch students’ attention and that is not central to the learning but even worst, that can hinder learning.

Interesting texts, colorful learning material, songs, activities, games, dynamics, etc., can make learning fun and we can find lots and lots of these resources by simply googling “making learning fun” on the web. Cooperative learning assignments can make students have fun by the time they learn how to work in group without the teacher’s supervision and gain a deeper understanding of given topics or improve their skills (speaking, writing, reading, etc.) taking in consideration that making assignments interesting will ensure the information will be remembered better.

On the other hand, some educators in the early 1900´s warned about the dangers of focusing on fun in learning. John Dewey wrote extensively about the role of interest in learning and cautioned that you can’t make boring lessons interesting by mixing in fun; the thing itself is not more interesting that it was before the fun detail was added. More recent research indicates that adding interest by incorporating fascinating but irrelevant details actually gets in the way of learning the important information, diverts readers’ attention from the less interesting main ideas and interferes with comprehending the texts.

Gaining the students’ interest is necessary for learning; making it fun is just a tool commonly used to gain interest. Talking about connecting academic content to students’ interest we have to rely more on triggering and maintaining situational interest, here, the challenge is not only to catch but also hold students’ interest. For beginner students it is crucial to catch their attention, colorful learning materials, games and activities are good tools to do this. For students that are already engaged showing how academic content could be personally useful (meaningful) would be more effective to hold interest. In conclusion, making learning fun is a great tool to catch and even to hold students’ interest, but we don’t have to lose our objective and focus more on the tools we use. Making learning fun can help us with motivation but keep focused, it is not just fun for fun, is fun to get them engaged, to make it more understandable, easier, meaningful and memorable; the goal is learning itself, the academic content and the tasks their selves, not just to get fun or waste the time.

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