‘Creative Weird’: Exploring gamification of communication and listening skills through play.

Gamification has been a key emerging pedagogic approach in developing multiple skills through playful learning. In this article, we hypothesise that using a narrative-driven physical card game improves communication and listening skills in players through building an encouraging and engaging user experience. Our evaluation from two player groups of students revealed engagement and confidence improvements in both communication and listening skills development. Our findings also showed improvement of player self-awareness of these critical skills as well as highly reflective commentary related to communicating in professional contexts. We conclude there are more elements of interprofessional and interpersonal learning that can be improved and supported through similar playful learning approaches achieved through use of gamification-based interventions such as we describe here.