Jornada: role-playing games enter the classroom as a learning process
João Vitor Lopes de Farias defended at FCTE/UnB an undergraduate thesis examining the use of RPGs as the backbone of a learning process — combining narrative, roles and challenges with clear pedagogical goals.
Brasília, July 24, 2023
Many people learned how to work as a group, negotiate goals, and deal with uncertainty around an RPG table — not inside a classroom. That observation is easy to make; turning it into pedagogy is harder. This is the challenge the undergraduate thesis defended by João Vitor Lopes de Farias in July 2023 takes on, under the advising of Prof. Sergio Antônio Andrade de Freitas .
The work — named Jornada — treats the RPG not as decoration, but as the backbone of a learning process. Narrative, roles, chained challenges, and immediate feedback stop being playful accessories and become pedagogical instruments. The operational question is: how to tie specific learning goals to campaign arcs while preserving the sense of freedom that makes RPGs work?
By moving between Gamification and active learning , the thesis opens a rarely explored path: instead of gamifying in layers, adopt an entire game as the form. It is a work that interests both teachers willing to experiment and instructional designers looking for solid reference to underpin the bet.
The full text — written in Portuguese — is available at the UnB Undergraduate Theses Digital Library.
About CEDIS: The Center for Studies, Development, and Innovation in Software (CEDIS), linked to the University of Brasília, researches and develops innovative software solutions with strong presence in Gamification .