Minecraft as an Educational Tool Before, During, and After the Pandemic: A Case Study Research Project

The pandemic school years represented a time of profound crisis for education, especially in those countries where schools did not yet have an established experience with distance teaching and learning, including Italy. Educational institutions globally had to respond to an unexpected and forced transition from face-to-face to distance learning by experimenting with new and unfamiliar online teaching practices (Carrillo & Flores, 2020; König et al., 2020). The health emergency caused a situation of strong uncertainty, and schools found themselves operating in a context of unprecedented and constantly evolving challenges. With the suspension of in-person teaching activities and the introduction of distance learning, new difficulties, but also valuable opportunities, emerged for a general rethinking and renewal of teaching and organizational practices (Carretero Gomez et al., 2021; Center for Social Investment Studies, 2020; Sun et al., 2020).

The Italian education system was ill-equipped for the health crisis, lacking both structural preparedness and digital skills among students and teachers (INDIRE, 2020a; Lucisano, 2020). Redesigning distance learning posed challenges, especially for hands-on disciplines and collaborative activities hindered by social distancing measures (Ranieri et al., 2020). Consequently, schools globally adopted blended and online laboratory teaching methods to sustain collaborative learning (Gamage et al., 2020). Unfortunately, in our country, teachers prepared for distance learning were a ‘small minority’, and this may have exacerbated that ‘destabilizing uncertainty’ (Perla & Riva, 2016) produced by the interruption of traditional teaching methods and the need to reorient their actions (Mezirow, 2016). At the same time, the unprecedented situation in which they found themselves operating has certainly renewed reflection on the meaning, purposes, and methods of their teaching practice (Tramma, 2018).

But in Italy, this rethinking has not always translated into concrete actions and practices of renewal. During the lockdown (INDIRE, 2020a, 2020b, 2021; SIRD, 2020), surveys indicated minimal modifications in teachers’ methodologies. A significant portion continued using traditional frontal teaching even in distance learning, neglecting active methods (Ianes & Bellacicco, 2020). In many cases, in-person practices were replicated online (INDIRE, 2020a, 2020b, 2021; SIRD, 2021), hindering competency development outlined in National Guidelines (MIUR, 2012) and laboratory teaching promoting applied knowledge, skills, and competencies (Cigognini & Di Stasio, 2022). National and international data confirm a decline in active and practical teaching methods post-COVID (INDIRE, 2020b, 2021; OECD, 2020; SIRD, 2020). Few teachers used practical methods, but those who did, especially in distance teaching, reported higher satisfaction levels. These ‘practical teaching’ teachers not only implemented ‘active, collaborative teaching focused on developing critical thinking and metacognition’ more frequently (INDIRE, 2020b, p. 15) but also experimented with new assessment methods, such as self-assessment and peer assessment, contrary to what was done by ‘non-practical teaching’ teachers.

Online learning necessitates redesigning teaching methods and adjusting lesson schedules to manage cognitive fatigue from prolonged technology use and the unfamiliar educational setting. The goal is to sustain learner engagement through active teaching, encouraging participation and collaboration via remote teamwork solutions. Emphasizing laboratory teaching is crucial (Bruschi & Ricchiardi, 2020). However, while online meetings and virtual conferences have become common tools for teachers globally (Aslan, 2021), adapting teaching activities to impart professional skills in the new online landscape has proven to be a considerably more complex challenge. While face-to-face lectures have been transformed into live synchronous and asynchronous streaming videoconferences, the problem has arisen for those courses characterized by practice-oriented activities, which require teacher–student interaction and significant use of laboratory tools. The online approach, e-learning tools, and distance learning modalities work very well for knowledge construction through content delivery and process supervision, but they have limitations in developing practical laboratory skills (Gamage et al., 2020).

Despite these limitations, research has repeatedly shown that students’ learning outcomes in remote laboratories are equal to or sometimes better than those in traditional laboratories (Byukusenge et al., 2022; Fadda & Vivanet, 2021; Post et al., 2019; Rubim et al., 2019). This is because remote laboratories provide a more collaborative learning environment, thanks to the higher level of interaction between students and teachers, compared to in-person labs (Gamage et al., 2020). Where possible, lab activities have been replaced with online workshops and dedicated distance learning solutions, including the use of videos demonstrating experimental work, analysis of simulated or previously collected data, step-by-step visualization of the experimental process, and the execution of experiments using virtual scientific resources (Iuliano et al., 2021; Qiang et al., 2020).

One adoptable solution for implementing distance learning through hands-on activities is online game-based learning (GBL). This methodology integrates game features with learning materials in an interactive online world to facilitate the acquisition of knowledge and skills (Cheung et al., 2008). Previous research has demonstrated the effectiveness of this approach in enhancing student learning outcomes (Brezovszky et al., 2019; Wardoyo et al., 2020; Yang et al., 2022), and it is increasingly being adopted in innovative educational settings (Lorenzo-Alvarez et al., 2020). The growing popularity of online GBL is motivated by its voluntary and enjoyable nature (Felszeghy et al., 2019), serving as an active learning tool that ensures a high level of student motivation and engagement (Kolpikova et al., 2019; Plump & LaRosa, 2017). It supports experiential learning, peer learning, and collaborative learning (Marrara et al., 2021; Sutton & Jorge, 2020), enabling the acquisition of knowledge and skills in an engaging and interesting manner (Baek et al., 2020).

It has been verified that the use of immersive games such as Minecraft, Fortnite, and Roblox can have positive effects on the development of higher-order skills such as decision-making, critical thinking, problem-solving, and collaboration abilities (An, 2018; Powers, 2019). Moreover, the inherent competition in this approach encourages students to dedicate more time to learning activities, creating an important flow experience that leads to better performance through continuous and repeated practice (Chen & Chang, 2020). Additionally, these games are particularly effective in creating a sense of presence and co-presence (Bulu, 2012) and have mitigated the impact of social isolation during the pandemic (Du et al., 2021). All these potentials have been leveraged in the educational use of Minecraft at a distance (Rader et al., 2021; Sena & Jordão, 2021).

In this contribution, we present the immersive teaching experience and educational use of Minecraft in both in-person and remote settings, conducted within the research project MineClass from 2018 to 2021. The first part of the work provides a brief theoretical framework useful for contextualizing the educational role of Minecraft, while the second part describes the methodological approach of the study. In the third and fourth sections of this study, a comprehensive overview of the primary findings is presented and analyzed.

Minecraft is a 3D sandbox video game. The term ‘sandbox’ refers to the sandboxes usually set aside for young children to play in—protected and controlled environments where experimentation is possible in various ways. In Minecraft, the user’s avatar has a workspace and tools to interact with the virtual world of the video game. The world is made up of 3D blocks (reminiscent of LEGO blocks) of different materials earth, sand, stone, wood, water, and lava—and the player can use them to build objects, placing them as they wish. It is a game that also includes multiplayer mode and interaction with other players. Three-dimensional elements created in the game can be populated with structures, animals, and various characters. In recent years, Minecraft has garnered great popularity, permeating education and finding a place within schools as an instructional tool, especially with the introduction of Minecraft Education Edition. Its integration into education has been supported by scholars such as Cipollone et al. (2014), who noted its capacity to foster creativity and enhance conceptual understanding in ways often more attainable than real-world experiential learning. Minecraft’s educational applications span diverse disciplines, from STEM subjects (Lane et al., 2017) to the Arts (Cayatte, 2014), and extend to informal contexts, promoting the development of socio-emotional skills (Ringland et al., 2016). As educational institutions increasingly embrace Minecraft, there has been a surge in instructional materials guiding teachers in its classroom integration (Benassi, 2021; Dikkers, 2015; Gallagher, 2014).

MineClass was an online training and experimentation course organized by The National Institute for Documentation, Innovation and Educational Research (INDIRE) from 2018 to 2021 in collaboration with Microsoft, intended for primary and secondary school teachers and aimed at experimenting with Minecraft as educational software. Continuing the reflection on the use of video games to support immersive learning in education, which has been ongoing at INDIRE for some time (Benassi, 2013, 2018; Benassi et al., 2011; Niewint et al., 2019), the research group designed three editions of the MineClass program, investigating the possible enabling conditions—training, support, materials, previous experiences, and educational-organizational context—to integrate the use of Minecraft in the classroom, with the goal of providing meaningful learning experiences for students and sustainable experiences for teachers (Benassi, 2021).

The training for teachers was delivered through a dedicated Moodle platform and structured in four phases: a familiarization phase with the video game and its modes of use; a phase of designing educational activities based on specific disciplines and/or the development of cross-cutting skills; the actual experimentation in the classroom with students; and documentation of the experience. The training model, inspired by design thinking, emphasized the importance of the ideation and paper-based design phase before immersing in the virtual world. This phase is essential for planning roles, objectives, and actions, as well as for subsequent metacognitive reflection on one’s actions. The paper-based project allows for iterative returns during experimentation to what was agreed upon in the ideation phase with colleagues, making necessary corrections. This approach enables the crucial negotiation between creativity, technical constraints, and educational objectives (Benassi et al., 2019), ensuring the feasibility and sustainability of educational actions in Minecraft.

The first edition of MineClass started in December 2018 and ended in June 2019. Given the interest shown by teachers, the course was subsequently replicated in two additional editions, in the 2019/2020 and 2020/2021 school years. In total, the MineClass course trained >300 teachers over the three editions. The MineClass training focused, rather than on the functioning of the software, on the acquisition, by teachers, of a specific didactic methodology developed by the researchers together with a group of teachers and strongly inspired by the principles of Design Thinking (Brown, 2008). This methodology provides that:

the activity of building in Minecraft by students is always preceded by paper planning, so that the action (building) always depends on a declared plan on paper and that problems are first addressed in the definition, ideation, and planning stages, even before implementation;

Based on these and other indications, each participating teacher in the MineClass course was asked to design their own teaching activity based on their teaching discipline, incorporate it into the curriculum, and then experiment with it in class with their students during the training period.

Of the three editions of the MineClass course, the last two were strongly influenced by the pandemic. In the 2019/2020 edition, the lockdown occurred halfway through the course, when the participating teachers had already designed their teaching activity and were about to experiment with it in class. With schools closed, most of the teachers in that edition were unable to carry out the experimentation. However, some of them tried to redesign the activity so that it could be done by students (and the teacher) from home, using the potential of Minecraft as an online multiplayer platform. Minecraft, in its Education Edition version, allows the teacher to launch a game world on their computer and open it to other users connected remotely (Benassi, 2021).

In the 2020/2021 final edition, the schools had been reopened in a strong situation of regional discontinuity throughout Italy, but the rules on social distancing and the continuous threat that, with the worsening of the pandemic situation, schools could be closed again, made it difficult to repeat the MineClass course as it had been conceived before the pandemic, without the necessary corrections. It was therefore decided to limit the registrations to teachers who declared that they could manage and conduct the experimentation of activities even in case of school closure, that is, in ‘DaD’ (Distance Teaching and Learning). As a result, the research applied to the MineClass course also expanded and adapted to be an observatory to accompany teachers and students in their learning paths related to the distance use of Minecraft and to investigate the methods involved.

The study in question integrates results from case studies, qualitative–quantitative surveys, and semi-structured interviews conducted with participants in the MineClass project, using a mixed methods approach with the integration of qualitative–quantitative tools for data collection (Mortari & Ghirotto, 2019; Trinchero & Robasto, 2019). The focus of the study is on the last year of the pandemic and the final follow-up.

In constructing the semi-structured questionnaire, it was decided to prepare a single one for all three grades of education, calibrating the language. The sections of the questionnaire echo the P21 European Framework for mapping skills DigCompOrg and the results of the qualitative study conducted in 2019 through the construction of 12 case studies selected from experimental projects proposed by teachers in training (Benassi et al., 2019).

The MineClass research framework had to adapt due to the advent of the pandemic. On one hand, it was compressed in terms of teacher participation, as only those who could continue teaching activities with the entire class, even remotely, were involved. On the other hand, it reformulated the research setting as a privileged qualitative accompaniment and observatory of ongoing distance laboratory activities. This included dedicated web meetings, semi-structured online interviews, focus groups, and textual analysis of project materials and diary entries. In 2020, structured questionnaires were not administered to teachers and students, opting instead for a supportive and research-based approach more suitable for the emergency school context. The quantitative aspects of emergency teaching were investigated by the INDIRE Distance Learning Observatory (INDIRE, 2020a, 2020b), which engaged a portion of the same research group.

The 2020/2021 edition saw the participation of teachers who completed training and experimentation in the educational use of Minecraft, even in the midst of the pandemic. They were involved in an initial and a final questionnaire, the construction of documentation for training activities, and final project work. At the end of the program, within the broader primary sample of all teachers who completed the MineClass program, a follow-up questionnaire was administered in 2022 to delve into the educational use of the video game during the pandemic years (Cigognini et al., 2022; Nardi et al., 2023).

The results show the positive impact of the experimentation in terms of perceived added value for teachers in the development of transversal skills, increased motivation, involvement, and autonomy of their students. These data are particularly comforting and significant in relation to the unprecedented conditions posed by the pandemic and the forced closure of schools.

Despite some obvious difficulties in conducting distance learning laboratory activities during the pandemic months (Gamage et al., 2020), the experience conducted and presented in this contribution confirms the benefits found in previous research on the use of remote laboratories (Fadda & Vivanet, 2021), the implementation of online GBL paths (Wardoyo et al., 2020; Yang et al., 2022), and immersive distance learning conducted with Minecraft (Rader et al., 2021; Sena & Jordão, 2021). The greatest benefits can be traced to students’ ability to socialize, work in groups (even at a distance), and work independently, showing greater motivation and engagement compared to more traditional educational and learning activities. A good portion of the teachers included in the study continued to take advantage of the potential of Minecraft-based education even during school closures, demonstrating the validity of the experimentation conducted in the years prior to the pandemic.

The level of use of this methodology compared to the overall educational offer of teachers is also significant. The results related to the development of socialization skills, teamwork, autonomy, and distance problem solving are further experienced and deepened. With the increasing diffusion of laboratory education in secondary schools, product and process evaluation that supports competency-based learning processes has entered disciplinary learning spaces, and laboratory teaching activities focused on technological artifacts such as Mineclass seem to have supported the development of critical thinking among students, meta-reflection, and co-construction of learning processes. Some ‘side effects’ of distance learning have widely favoured the use of online documentation to follow step-by-step phases of group activities and constitute some feedback on the development of students’ metacognition and reflection on cognitive processes, implemented within the disciplinary aspects that make the school of doing increasingly practicable also in high school.

In this regard, it is hoped that laboratory-based teaching can extend beyond the classroom and also take place during students’ at-home time. This home environment is essential for metacognition, collaboration, peer evaluation, and critical self-assessment. The same national surveys on distance laboratory education underline this passage, for which distance laboratory work goes beyond the ‘synchronous hour’ and spills over into afternoon group activities in secondary school (INDIRE, 2022). The results also show the emergence of a widespread mode of laboratory teaching, where the classic laboratory is displaced and exits the classroom: it opens up to a time of school at home for laboratory work and collaborative activities, and peer-to-peer laboratory work can also take place in the afternoon, be managed in small groups, and deepen activities in a cross-cutting way. Without claiming to be exhaustive, the reflection is on how these aspects can constitute further enabling elements for deepening immersive teaching in high school as a laboratory mode, even in the context of a new normality in school.

The results of the study presented here show statistically significant relationships concerning the themes of autonomy, self-efficacy, and the social dimension of learning. This applies both in terms of increased autonomy and psycho-cognitive growth among students across different school levels and in terms of gender differences. These findings support the choice to favor active and laboratory-based teaching solutions even during the pandemic and distance education (Bruschi & Ricchiardi, 2020). Teachers involved in the follow-up already indicate Minecraft as a strong element of cohesion for socialization and the reduction of social distancing. Those teachers who managed to adapt Minecraft for remote use in the distributed and dislocated afternoon laboratory confirmed an increase in social well-being, which contrasts starkly with the experience of pandemic schooling (INDIRE, 2022a). In the follow-up, teachers also highlighted the benefits of experimentation in terms of added value for the development of transversal skills, increased motivation, student engagement, and autonomy (Cigognini et al., 2022; Nardi et al., 2023).

Remote learning (Distance and Digital Learning, DaD) and pandemic schooling have shifted the prevalence of laboratory-based teaching to secondary education levels (INDIRE, 2022b). Here, the greater autonomy and maturity of students in working remotely with their devices have proven functional in satisfying their strong need for social interaction. This is in contrast to the heavy burden of social distancing imposed by adults on secondary school students (Cigognini & Di Stasio, 2022). National and international surveys conducted during the lockdown period have, on the one hand, noted an overall reduction in active and laboratory-based teaching practices compared to the pre-COVID-19 period (OECD, 2020; SIRD, 2020). On the other hand, they have observed that only a minority of teachers have used these important practices to engage their students more and counteract the feelings of social and emotional isolation generated by the ongoing health emergency (INDIRE, 2020a).

In this context, the study described here stands out as a countertrend best practice. It has succeeded in highlighting the immersive aspects of teaching in service of the social dimension of learning, serving as an educational tool that ensures the maintenance of educational and social relationships despite the interruption of in-person teaching.

The feedback received from students through both questionnaires regarding the challenges faced during educational activities within Minecraft highlights difficulties related to collaborative learning and the intricate nature of learning dynamics, particularly when engaging with cognitive artifacts resembling project work. Students’ profound understanding of these challenges, coupled with their active involvement in situations involving technological artifacts as cognitive tools, alongside their growing self-efficacy, enhanced autonomy, and problem solving skills cultivated in immersive education, can be recognized as facilitating factors to be nurtured in the post-pandemic educational landscape.

As a concluding recommendation, to enhance these practices, extending study hours into the afternoon could facilitate collaborative work in pairs or small groups. The digital cloud spaces available in all schools for students could serve as platforms for these activities. Documentation of learning processes could be systematically gathered through these resources, always accessible for teacher feedback. Consequently, these processes could be deliberated upon during designated synchronous sessions. Preserving and nurturing these practices in the evolving educational environment is crucial and represents valuable habits that we should continue to cultivate.