Overcoming the boundaries of the classroom walls through the use of online role-gaming: A theoretical approach to the use and implementation of Classcraft in English language teaching

In the last two decades, teaching software tools have been implemented in everyday practice, applied to improve learning in different subjects, including foreign languages. The use of a virtual space and the application of dedicated software packages have long been studied (Ghislandi 2014; Miller 2014; Hampel and Stickler 2015). Gamification, a term defining the use of principles of gaming in teaching, has emerged as a new trend. Although the use of games, especially, in foreign language teaching is not a novelty in itself, this new application through an online environment has shown new potentialities. Classcraft is a virtual space, inspired by the D&D role game, where students are led through a series of quests, set up by the teacher. Previous studies on Classcraft have considered different perspectives: its motivational push, (Haris and Sugito 2015), the students’ experience (Sanchez, Shawn, Jouneau-Sion 2016) and general performance and engagement (Papadakis and Stamatios 2017). Off the beaten path, implementing a virtual classroom promises to be an effective tool for English language acquisition. This paper intends to explore the potentialities of Classcraft in teaching English as a foreign language, in order to provide a first (provisional) assessment on its adequacy and feasibility in the English class according to EFL principles.