Mystery of the Runaway Letrabytes: Inclusive Assessment of Phonological Awareness With Tangible Gamification

The development of phonological awareness, i.e. the metacognitive skill that allows thinking and manipulating the language structure, from an early age is mandatory for the acquisition of literacy skills. Multisensory stimulation, curiosity and interest are fundamental for learning. In doing so, Communication Technologies have a key role because a learning-oriented use can encourage current digital natives’ interest and thinking. This paper presents a game with tangible technology designed for both intervention and diagnostic, formative and summative evaluation. The user experience was carried out during two weeks through a multiple case study with four kindergarten children. A multimedia adventure game was presented in which they had to solve phonological awareness challenges through the manipulation of tangible technology to achieve the final goal. The observation was recorded in the designed evaluation model, allowing the analysis of pre- and post-intervention data after the triangulation of data for subsequent qualitative analysis. The results show an improvement in phonological awareness, as well as the gamified experience marks. These promising outcomes support the use of such methodologies to a learner-centered education model.