Edutainment Strategies in Enhancing Reading Comprehension among Undergraduate Students

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Although the term edutainment itself seems to be new in teaching – learning process, it is quite popular in the entertainment industries especially in the developments of entertaining programs such as amusement parks, television shows, and computer games in the tardy of twentieth century. There also an immense paradigm shift in the teaching – learning process from teacher- centred instruction in to learner- centred instruction with more interactive, engaging, experiential method. Learning theorists such as John Dewey and others who have imbibed the concepts of cognitive psychology for their doctrines of pedagogy emphasised the importance of initiative and excitement of learners to learn and affirmed learning as a lifelong activity which is a primary to human subsistence. Nel Noddings, one of the notable contemporary education theorists, argued education to be instrumented towards the basic aim and / or life of mankind and its happiness. ( Happiness and Education,2003). Johan Huizinga (1872-1945) advocated that play and joyfulness are essential to all learners’ performance. Hence, it can be conceived that play, or playfulness are an important factors in education too. Theorists like Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi from the field of positive psychology argued that human beings could perform better when they are engrossed in joyful activities (Flow, 1975). Thus, it can be generalised that learners also could perform better when learning engrossed with joyful activities. In the same way, despite the concept edutainment is often used in the computer based games and gamifying endeavours, this concept also applies to other aspects of human life. Out of the many activities of instructional processes, the reading followed by comprehension among the students is considered to be the most difficult activity. Hence, an attempt has been made to examine the efficacy of edutainment strategies in enhancing reading comprehension among undergraduate students through an experimentation administered over 50 undergraduate students. The results indicated that edutainment strategies effective in enhancing all types of selected comprehension among undergraduate students.