Utilizing Outdoor Quiz Games in Secondary School: Teachers' Perceptions of Usefulness

This study examines how secondary school teachers in Norway perceive the usefulness of ZippyGO, an outdoor quiz game that combines geo-referenced map controls with quiz questions. The central research question asks what influences teachers' perceptions of the game's usefulness. The investigation focuses on a single case: four teachers at a lower secondary school (level 9, roughly ages 14 to 15) who wrote quiz questions drawn from their own curricula in Norwegian, science, mathematics, English, and social science. Pupils then completed the quiz in groups of three to five during an outdoor school day.

The authors used a mixed-methods case study design, combining surveys with in-depth semi-structured interviews, and analysed the data through iterative line-by-line coding that was linked back to the literature. Teacher responses were mixed. Positive perceptions centred on the novelty of outdoor group work and the engagement the game produced, with teachers describing pupils as excited, laughing, and competitive. Negative perceptions concerned practical constraints, particularly the difficulty of supervising pupils who left the school grounds, technical malfunctions in the app, and weather. Teachers also reported that writing questions added workload, and only two of the four collaborated on question development, largely because of limited shared time.

The authors conclude that no respondent questioned the learning potential of the game itself, and that concerns were mainly about factors beyond teachers' control. Because collaboration was minimal, the study could not determine whether co-developing quizzes would strengthen teacher teamwork. The authors note that the small single-case sample limits generalisation and plan a follow-up study involving teacher-contributed quizzes in North Macedonia and Norway.