Follow-up for Taaltreffers edugame

The educational online game Taaltreffers was developed in 2008 as part of the 'Scoring in the neighbourhood' project, an initiative of football club FC Twente. Several students from the University of Twente Educational Science programme are closely involved in the project. The game has been a great success. After the summer holidays, a new version of Taaltreffers will be introduced at 150 schools across the country. The following year, the game will be introduced at 250 additional schools. Moreover, new versions of the game are being developed for several other professional football clubs in the Netherlands.

The Taaltreffers game is all about FC Twente. Playing the game, primary school pupils help former footballer Jan van Halst with preparations for an important match. They explore the Twente Stadium 'the Grolsch Veste' in a virtual environment. To gain access to the boardroom, the field or locker room, however, the pupils have to play word games in which they need to discover the meaning of certain key words. Players, referees and journalists walking around in the virtual stadium give them tips. The FC Twente match can only begin once all language games have been completed. The game has been a resounding success. Pupils find it fun and challenging, but more importantly they learn from the game, according to research conducted by a number of educational science students.

Educational questions

The pupils' enthusiasm for the project is shared by the UT students. Marloes Smit was one of the first educational science students to study Taaltreffers. "I was really excited as soon as I heard about the Taaltreffers game. I am very interested in these kinds of new learning tools."

According to Joke Voogt, thesis supervisor of the UT Educational Science programme, the project is ideally suited for educational science students. "This is a prime example of a project that gives rise to many educational questions: How can you get school kids enthusiastic about learning new vocabulary? And once the game has been developed, how do you see to it that teachers and pupils use it effectively in the educational environment?"

Further development

FC Twente has recently awarded a grant for the further development of the game. The new version focuses specifically on pupils in the last three years of primary school who have a language deficiency. Voogt adds that there are various plans in the works. "There have been talks with the Royal Netherlands Football Association KNVB about customizing the game for other professional football clubs in the Netherlands." Furthermore, the new version of Taaltreffers will be much more extensive, according to Voogt. "The new version of the game is a better match for the lessons in school, because the vocabulary has been enhanced to include more words that are seen as relevant in primary education. There are now 2,250 vocabulary words, up from just 400 in the first version."

There is a more extensive article about the collaboration between FC Twente and the Educational Science programme available here. There is more information about the game on the Taaltreffers website.

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