When Ayesha Inam moved her co-designed project online, something unfortunate happened.

She watched 100% engagement in class dwindle to less than 50% online. Half of her kids weren't even showing up to lessons.

And then she tried something magical.

She gamified it.

Suddenly ALL of her students were engaged.

In this short podcast episode, Ayesha Inam, Head Facilitator at micro-school LEO's Workshop by Beaconhouse, describes how to 'gamify' our PBL experiences to increase engagement and how to:

Co-design your projects with student input

🎮 Set up the gamified experience and NEVER have to teach again.

🎮 Improve quality of student work by 'badging it.'

🎮 Make seemingly dry subjects come to life with the right challenges.

🎮 Have students self-organize and organize team meetings on their own well beyond online lesson time.

Connect with Ayesha:

Instagram (@thestemlabpakistan), LinkedIn, Twitter (@ayeshainam036)

Website: www.Leosworkshop.net

The Gamified Unit: https://transformschool.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/SLOP-The-Game-Plan.pdf

Sample Gamified Leaderboard (from Andres Joubert of Park Maitland School): https://docs.google.com/a/parkmaitland.org/spreadsheets/d/15VHH21d6jvr9p3Z7WwOhp49RAY1Z1PcBtw5C_2_OpeI/edit?usp=drive_web

Ayesha's Bio:

Ayesha Inam is a Computer Software Engineer by her degree, a K-5 STEM Education Specialist and Project-Based Learning Practitioner by passion.

She co-founded a small educational organisation - the STEM Lab of Pakistan in 2016 with a friend. The SLOP (The STEM Lab of Pakistan) is an after-school club that promotes and inculcates the love for Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics in young children, especially young girls through play-based and game-based educational activities.

She started her PBL Journey at TNS Beaconhouse in 2017, as a Grades 2-5 PBL Practitioner & later as a PBL Coordinator for 4.5 years, where she fell in love with Project Based Learning instantly because of the amazing things students were doing during their projects. Apart from many other valuable certifications in education, she holds a Distinction in a rigorous certification course of Teaching and Learning with Digital Technologies by the University of Cambridge. Using PBL Methodologies she has facilitated more than 150 students in creating products such as useful gadgets by using electric circuits for their families, blogging about the helping staff of their school and making their stories visible(https://fan.school/spaces?spaceId=8vok7hkqgikp1l2ljz0x7m56k), redesigning their school spaces and their suggestions taken in account by their new school's architect, Rosan Bosch; creating an Urdu rap song (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P5WbxUeUeyc) to make the learning easier for novice Urdu learners, analysed the impacts of people in history, setting up small slime and cookies businesses, hosted discussion panels with International space scientists and Pakistani children to raise awareness about space sciences amongst children(https://fb.watch/asQnhzTyyf/) and many other such innovative ventures.

Currently working as the Head Facilitator of an innovative private K-5 micro-school, Leo's Workshop by Beaconhouse for implementing the best PBL Practices at the school. She also serves as the Creative Director at the STEM Lab Pakistan so the love for STEM subjects keeps growing in the hearts of little children.

She loves investigating the science of learning; learning about the things that drive and motivate children to be interested in their own learning processes. Ayesha dreams of making academic learning as fun and addictive as the gaming industry some day.

She loves interacting and engaging with children, helping them learn how the world works; through gamification, game-based and play-based activities. In her leisure time, she likes to read books, perform crazy science experiments with her two biological kids and meditate whenever she can.

Gamifying Your PBL Experience with Ayesha Inam

The Student-Centered Shift: Empowered International Schools and Classrooms Through Project-Based Learning