From Pilot to Practice: Evaluating Playful Learning in Project Management through RE:PLAY

Teaching project management presents a familiar challenge. While students can learn planning tools, risk management techniques and project methodologies through lectures and case studies, these approaches often struggle to recreate the uncertainty, complexity and collaboration that define real-world projects.

How can students experience the need to adapt when priorities suddenly change? How do they learn to negotiate competing viewpoints, communicate decisions, and respond to unexpected challenges before entering professional practice?

These questions formed the basis of an innovative playful learning activity first piloted within Coventry University’s Engineering Project Management module. Following the success of that pilot, the activity has now been implemented as the first full research study within the RE:PLAY (Researching Playful Learning Across the University) project in collaboration with RE:PLAY Fellow and module lead Neil O’Shea, generating new evidence about how playful learning can support authentic professional learning in higher education.

Learning project management by doing

Rather than learning project management solely through lectures or case studies, students were challenged to manage a project within a playful, collaborative environment.

Working in teams, students designed project solutions using LEGO® as rapid physical prototypes before responding to AI-generated “breaking news” events that introduced unexpected project disruptions. As project requirements changed, teams reassessed priorities, negotiated alternative solutions, redesigned their projects, and ultimately pitched their revised proposals before reflecting on the decisions they had made.

The activity combined physical prototyping, collaborative problem-solving, simulation, discussion and reflection to mirror many of the challenges encountered in real project environments. Rather than simplifying project management, it encouraged students to experience its complexity in a safe and supportive learning space.

Designing learning through play

One of the distinctive aspects of this work is that every playful element was intentionally designed using the Learning Mechanics to Game Mechanics (LM-GM) framework. Instead of introducing playful activities simply to make learning more engaging, the framework was used to align each activity with specific learning processes and associated playful values.

Learning objective	Learning mechanic	Playful mechanic	Activity
Apply project management concepts	Decision-making, problem-solving	Dynamic scenarios	AI-generated project disruptions
Develop systems thinking	Experimentation, systems thinking	LEGO prototyping	Building and refining project models
Strengthen collaboration	Collaboration, negotiation	Cooperative construction	Team design and shared decision-making
Experience uncertainty	Adaptability	Dynamic events	“Breaking news” project changes
Consolidate learning	Reflection, articulation	Pitching and discussion	Team presentations and facilitated debrief

GM (activity feature)	Intended LM	Related playful values
LEGO building	Systems thinking	experimentation, agency
AI disruption	Adaptability	Curiosity, experimentation
Group pitching	Reflection	social interaction
Open-ended tasks	Creativity	autonomy

This mapping ensured that every playful mechanic served a clear pedagogical purpose. More importantly, it also provided the foundation for evaluating whether the activity actually supported the intended learning processes.

Evaluating what happens during play

One of the aims of the RE:PLAY project is not simply to encourage playful teaching, but to build a robust evidence base for understanding how playful learning works. At Coventry University, we expanded the collective work into analysing specific playful mechanics and playful values as embedded in the design.

Rather than asking students whether they enjoyed the activity, we adopted a mixed-methods evaluation combining quantitative and qualitative approaches.

Following the session, students completed a structured questionnaire examining three complementary dimensions of the learning experience:

What we evaluated	Key findings
Playful Values	Students reported high levels of curiosity, experimentation, autonomy, agency and collaboration throughout the activity.
Learning Mechanics	Students experienced systems thinking, adaptive decision-making, collaboration, reflection and application of project management concepts.
Game/Play Mechanics	LEGO prototyping, AI-generated disruption scenarios, collaborative construction, pitching and discussion were all perceived as meaningful contributors to learning.
Evaluation quality	Strong internal reliability across all three scales (Cronbach’s α = .83 to .94).
Relationship between play and learning	Strong association between Game/Play Mechanics and Learning Mechanics (Spearman’s ρ = .838, p < .001).
Qualitative insights	Five themes reinforced the quantitative findings, particularly collaboration, learning through making, adaptability, connecting theory to practice, and engagement through play.

The quantitative data were analysed using descriptive statistics, reliability analysis and correlation analysis, while students’ written reflections were analysed using reflexive thematic analysis. Finally, the quantitative and qualitative findings were interpreted alongside the original LM-GM mapping, allowing us to explore not only whether the activity was successful, but also how the different playful mechanics contributed to learning.

What did we learn?

Although this represents an initial study with a relatively small cohort (n = 13), the findings provide encouraging evidence that the activity supported both engagement and meaningful learning.

Students consistently rated the activity highly across all three dimensions of the evaluation framework. The Playful Values findings suggest that learners experienced the session as one that encouraged curiosity, experimentation, autonomy, collaboration and active participation. Rather than describing the activity as simply “fun”, students reported feeling able to explore ideas, test different solutions, learn from mistakes and work collaboratively in a supportive environment.

The Learning Mechanics findings showed strong evidence that the activity supported systems thinking, collaborative problem-solving, adaptability, reflection and the application of project management concepts. Meanwhile, the Game/Play Mechanics findings indicated that students viewed the LEGO prototyping, AI-generated disruption scenarios, collaborative design activities, pitching and discussion as integral to their learning rather than simply engaging classroom activities.

Importantly, the evaluation instrument itself demonstrated strong internal reliability, with Cronbach’s alpha values ranging from 0.83 to 0.94 across the three scales. This provides confidence that the questionnaire consistently measured the intended dimensions of the learning experience.

One of the most interesting findings emerged from examining the relationships between the different dimensions of the evaluation. We observed a strong positive correlation between students’ perceptions of the Game/Play Mechanics and the Learning Mechanics (Spearman’s ρ = .838, p < .001). In practical terms, students who perceived the playful mechanics as more meaningful also reported stronger learning experiences. While correlation does not demonstrate causation, it provides encouraging evidence that the playful mechanics were closely aligned with the intended learning processes identified during the design of the activity.

The relationships involving Playful Values tell an equally interesting story. Students who experienced higher levels of curiosity, experimentation, autonomy and collaboration also tended to report more positive perceptions of the playful mechanics (ρ = .577, p = .039). The relationship between Playful Values and Learning Mechanics was more moderate (ρ = .520), suggesting that while creating a playful environment is important, meaningful learning depends on how those playful values are translated into purposeful learning activities. In other words, a playful atmosphere alone is not enough. It is the thoughtful design of the learning experience that transforms playful interactions into meaningful learning.

The qualitative findings reinforced this interpretation. Five interconnected themes emerged from students’ reflections:

Collaboration and teamwork
Learning through making
Adaptability and decision-making
Connecting theory to practice
Engagement through play

Students repeatedly described LEGO prototyping as helping them externalise ideas, visualise project relationships and negotiate solutions with their peers. The AI-generated disruption scenarios encouraged rapid decision-making and adaptation, reflecting the uncertainty often encountered in professional project environments. Rather than describing the activity as enjoyable in isolation, students consistently linked the playful elements with deeper learning, practical application and improved understanding of project management concepts.

Taken together, these findings suggest that the educational value of the activity did not arise from LEGO, AI or pitching individually. Instead, learning emerged through the deliberate orchestration of multiple playful mechanics working together to create an environment in which students could experiment, collaborate, reflect and adapt. This is precisely what the LM-GM mapping sought to achieve during the design of the activity.

Extending LM-GM to playful learning

One of the most exciting outcomes of this study extends beyond project management education itself.

The Learning Mechanics to Game Mechanics (LM-GM) framework has traditionally been used to analyse serious games and support the design of game-based learning experiences. This study extends that application by demonstrating how the framework can be adapted to broader forms of playful learning, including physical prototyping, collaborative play, hybrid simulation, pitching and structured reflection.

By integrating Playful Values, Learning Mechanics, and Game/Play Mechanics within a single evaluation framework, we move beyond asking whether students enjoyed a playful activity towards understanding how different playful interactions contribute to specific learning processes.

This provides educators with a more evidence-informed approach to designing, implementing and evaluating playful learning across disciplines. It also offers a practical framework that other RE:PLAY Fellows are now beginning to apply across a growing range of playful learning interventions.

RE:PLAY Fellows in action

This project is one of the first completed research studies emerging from the RE:PLAY Fellowship Scheme (across six HEIs), which supports educators across Coventry University in designing, implementing and evaluating playful approaches within their own teaching.

Rather than treating teaching innovation and educational research as separate activities, RE:PLAY Fellows use their own modules as living laboratories to investigate how different forms of play support different forms of learning. By combining thoughtful pedagogical design with rigorous evaluation, the project is building an evidence base that will inform future playful learning practice across the University and beyond.

Neil’s study represents an important milestone for RE:PLAY. It demonstrates not only an engaging approach to teaching project management, but also how playful learning can be systematically designed, rigorously evaluated and continually refined through educational research.

As more RE:PLAY Fellows complete their projects, we look forward to sharing further examples that continue to strengthen the evidence base for playful learning in higher education. This study is an important step towards understanding not simply whether playful learning works, but how carefully designed playful experiences can support meaningful and authentic learning across disciplines.