Integrating AI and Gamification for Engaging Education: Insights from Kahoot!'s Sean D'Arcy

In this episode of Inside Learning, brought to you by the Learnovate Centre, host Aidan McCullen is joined by Sean D'Arcy, Chief Solutions Officer at Kahoot!—Europe’s largest EdTech platform.

They explore the post-pandemic challenges in education, including dwindling student attention and motivation, and how tools like Kahoot! are helping teachers reimagine engagement through gamification, interactivity, and now AI.

Sean shares how Kahoot! supports both K-12 and higher education through AI-powered quiz creation, student-led learning, and real-time feedback. The conversation also dives into the role of AI in personalized education, how workplace learning is evolving with Gen Z, and how organizations can rebuild culture and performance post-layoffs.

Key Takeaways:

• How AI is enhancing teacher productivity and learner engagement

• Shifts in learner psychology and classroom expectations

• Practical strategies for using Kahoot in classrooms and corporate training

• Insights into upskilling, microlearning, and future-ready skills

• The role of gamified learning in improving retention and morale post-layoffs

Perfect for educators, L&D professionals, and anyone passionate about the future of learning.

Find the articles mentioned here:

https://kahoot.com/blog/2025/10/06/training-after-layoffs-3-strategies-to-rebuild-engagement-and-performance/

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
The Inside Learning Podcast is broughtto you by the Learnovate Center.

(00:04):
Learnovate research explores the powerof learning to unlock human potential.
Find out more about learnovate researchon the science of learning and the
future of work at learnovatecentre.org.
Today's classrooms have changed, ourattention has changed, and the tools we
use to learn are changing even faster.
Many teachers report that studentsare harder to engage than they were

(00:26):
before the pandemic yet platforms builtaround play curiosity and interaction
seem to be cutting through that fog.
Our guest works for Europe'slargest EdTech company.
He has spent his career at theintersection of technology,
pedagogy, and motivation.
His work focuses on how interactivelearning, gamification, and now AI

(00:47):
can help teachers create environmentswhere students participate,
not just sit through content.
We'll explore what this means forclassrooms, for learner psychology,
and for the future of educationin a world where attention has
become the scarce resource,
it is a pleasure to welcomeChief Solutions Officer at Kahoot

(01:08):
sean Darcy, welcome to the show.
thanks so much, Aiden.
It's great to be here
with you today.
Great to have you.
And I'd say people were expectingan Irish accent there, Sean as well.
Do my best, but you'll haveto settle for Canadian today.
Sean was telling me when he comesinto Ireland often he'll be greeted
by the passport officers andthey'll say, welcome home Mr. Darcy.

(01:28):
My middle name is actually Patrick,so it's like my, parents couldn't
get enough of the Irish name,so they had to give me a middle
name, Patrick, in addition to Sean
let's get stuck on, we'vea lot to get through.
I've been t trawling through yourarticles that you've written on the
Kahoot blog, but you've, as I saidin the intro, worked across education
markets for years, and I wondered whatwas the biggest shift you've seen in

(01:51):
how students show up in learning today?
Even before the pandemic, I think wesaw a big shift already happening.
I think teachers, and we have around9 million active teachers on our
platform in the last 12 months.
and they all struggle with the same thing.
And that's really engaging kids to really,really attend to whatever's being taught.

(02:14):
If you'd look at the shift, a few yearsago it was really , paying attention.
Then more recently it'sbecome just showing up at all.
one of the big trends we see in the USparticular are a lot of schools that where
, the students actually aren't class.
So really we need to have solutionsout there that are actually helping

(02:38):
only help kids to drive learningoutcomes, but just at the most basic
level, just really show up to learn.
And, that's really the challenge.
when Sean, did you see the realshift towards engagement and
the use of tools like Kahoot?
Pre pandemic, the trendwas, really ramping up.
And I think in the classroom,at least with the advent of 1:2:1

(03:01):
devices or Chromebooks, apple iPadsthat really accelerated things.
Uh, and then when the pandemic hitobviously everything just went into
hyper speed at that point where.
It wasn't just a nice to have,it was a must have a solution
where, kids were at home.
They really needed to, be focused.

(03:23):
The teacher needed to do everythingthey could and have the tools in their
toolkit to actually engage them.
So that's when things really took off.
and then what we saw post pandemicis the sort of continuation a,
a new sort of level setting of.
What was expected in learning with,more engaging solutions like ours
being used in day-to-day teaching.

(03:44):
I wondered about this, Sean are peopleblaming reducing attention spans of
students or are they blaming maybe anuplift in the amount of information
expected to be learned by students?
That's a good question.
I think it's a bit of both really.
I think there's no.
Denying that, , kids arelearning and they're spending

(04:04):
their time differently than theydid, five years or 10 years ago.
They're spending a lot more time indifferent gamified or gaming environments,
so when they come to school, there's anexpectation that, at least some gaming
elements are brought into the classroomand brought into the way they can learn.

(04:24):
and when it comes to the kind ofcurriculum that's being taught, What
has been changing over time though, isthe need for more skill development.
And so we're big fans of futureReady Skills as we call 'em.
And we have a couple of pedagogies suchas something called Learners to Leaders,
which is all about kids creating theirown Kahoots to play with their classmates.

(04:48):
We really like this because ithelps develop critical thinking
collaboration, communication, andeven leadership types of skills.
I think that sort of skillsetdevelopment is, becoming more and
more front and center in additionto, of course, the curriculum.
of course, AI is.
Here, and you know,, I havechildren myself, 15 and 12.

(05:10):
They're AI natives, so they don'tsee it as this brand new thing,
but they don't really use it yet.
And certainly they're notusing it in the classroom.
And I wondered where you see it used andmaybe potentially used in the future.
So primarily for us, it'sthe educators that are using
it today to create Kahoots.
And so far it's been an amazing timesaver for them because they can just

(05:35):
take a document that they have itcould be PDF, or it could be PowerPoint
or it could be anything they have andreally just upload it to Kahoot and
voila, they have an instant Kahoot,which saved them probably an hour, maybe
an hour and a half of time that theywould've spent making that Kahoot.
And of course we use generative AI to dothis, but we're also able to enhance,

(05:59):
any presentation that anybody has.
Could be even, at the workin the workplace as well.
If you wanna add engagementto any sort of presentation,
you can do that with Kahoot.
So I think hoots really beenor the way we've been using
AI has really been to help.
Productivity.
But I think as we move ahead, we'regonna be using it hopefully more for

(06:20):
personalized learning and also throughanalytics as well, being able to make
sure that we're seeing the learningoutcomes and if we're not, how to actually
get to mastery by using AI to, havesupplemental types of review in addition
to what was being taught in class.
There was one thing I was thinkingabout recently, Sean, where AI learns

(06:40):
from the content on the internet,and then I read recently that.
Up to 50% of content on theinternet is actually written by ai.
I was like, oh, this is like,it's cannibalizing itself.
It's using itself to fuel itself.
Yes.
And then I thought about, I lecturein Trinity College here in Ireland,
and I was thinking about how, andI tell the students this, , don't

(07:03):
write your essay with ai.
Purely, yes.
Use it as a way to challenge your ideas,but don't get it to do writing for you.
And then I heard about someteachers and some professors who
are using AI to correct the essays.
And I thought about the samething, AI's write the essays.
And then I was correctingthe essays at the same time.

(07:24):
And then I wondered like, howdo we, use AI without getting
people to lose curiosity andengage them in a different way.
Yeah, I think the essay as aformat is really under duress.
I would say it's a tricky one.
But the format that we are reallykeen to try to bring front and

(07:45):
center is more this discussion, you,how to create discussions, how to
create conversations in a class.
And I think Kahoot using ai, that canbe a really good combo for creating,
thought starters and things like that.
we have one feature on our platformcalled Brainstorm, which allows you to do

(08:06):
really quick, brainstorms really aroundany topic and really ga and gamified
as well, so making it even more fun.
So I think being able to quicklyjump into any discussion area and use
AI as a sort of jumping point isreally what we are excited about.
but I do agree with you thoughthe essay format , is definitely.

(08:29):
especially if both sides areusing AI to both create and correct.
That's that's a rough.
Defeats the purpose.
Absolutely.
I also have some kids.
And , I say the exact same thing.
You can use it as a, as a way tosort of boot up, what your thoughts
are and try to get them down.
But don't use it as the actual, whateveryou , do not use it as the actual

(08:51):
essay.
The thing I always be worriedabout is that we lose that muscle.
Like, I mean, if you can't, thestruggle is where the learning happens.
You have to go throughthat struggle to learn.
again like these future ready skills are,the ability to do the critical thinking.
That's really, that's everything, right?

(09:12):
And especially looking ahead,the job markets changing, the
needs of society are changing.
the ability to be able to thinkthrough what you're doing is
never been more important.
To be able to use AI to help you buildthose skills, I think is really the
most important thing at this moment.
And speaking of that, Sean, the jobmarket and how the workplace has

(09:35):
changed and lifelong learning is nowsomething that's with us more than ever
before that we need to have on-rampsand off ramps into education systems
and a lot of people who have had aneducation experience, hadn't the best
experience, they don't remember it fondly.
So therefore we need to actuallychange how that works for people.
What are you seeing out there ofpeople who are doing that right?

(09:58):
The workforce is changing completely.
I think we are seeing the Gen Zs that arecoming into the workforce they just expect
very different approach to learning.
Than any other previous generation.
the need for upskilling is ongoing.
And you know, this is a generationthat's used to using YouTube to

(10:19):
learn about anything on the fly.
And they're not gonna wait around fora course made by the l and d team.
They're, they wanna knownow, they wanna learn now.
So that whole.
Yeah, it's that whole construct of likehow to do upskilling now is just, it's
more on demand and more micro learningand less courseware, so to speak.

(10:42):
So I think that's one side of it.
I think the other side of it isjust general engagement in the.
Place is in kind of a tough spot.
There was a, a report made by Gallupearlier this year that showed that the
global percentage of engaged employeeswere, that were engaged was down to 21%.

(11:07):
Only one in five were actually feltengaged at their, in their work.
So I think in general.
The learning is one part, but just,generally engaging employees, especially
the youngest employees that arecoming into the workforce, I think
is really the struggle out there.
So those are a couple things and Ithink we like to think, of course of
course we're, I'm, we're biased butwe'd like to think that we are really

(11:31):
helping, different companies out there.
Drive engagement and really, of course,beyond engagement, drive, ROI on
whatever, whatever matters for them.
It could be, product productivity, someof the, we work with a lot of airlines.
A lot of hospitality, A lot of themare saying we need our new employees

(11:51):
to get onboarded as fast as possible.
We wanna retain them on the other side.
How do you, what kind of tools areout there that can help us do that
quickly in a way that's reinforcingand, positive and hopefully memorable?
There are a lot of good examples outthere, but certainly things are changing.
And Sean, speaking of the change,one of the things that's coming at

(12:14):
us like a freight train has alreadyhit many companies and individuals
is layoffs in companies and layoffsfor AI optimization or just not
being hired in the first place.
But let's focus on layoffs because I readan article you wrote, which was called
Training After Layoffs, three Strategiesto Rebuild Engagement and Performance.

(12:35):
I'd love to share some of thatbecause , not enough people in
my view are calling this out.
This is gonna be inevitable and it's gonnabe inevitable for people who get into
the workforce and maybe their industry isdisrupted, let alone their organization.
So they're gonna have to go throughreengagement, retraining, upskilling,
reskilling, unlearning, relearning.

(12:57):
And the, that piece of the world isvery different than it has been before
where you had some bit of job security.
one of the things that's interestingin that article is you talk about it's
not just the people who have been laidoff, it's also the morale impact to the
wider organization and particular Gen Z.
I mean, we found, I mean, justthat article actually came from

(13:19):
just speaking to customers.
And some of them had saidto us that they use Kahoot.
Of course if you've ever experiencedthe layoff round at any company,
it's of course tough, obviously foreveryone who's been laid off, but
it's also very hard on the culture.
everybody left.
So how do you reignite the culture?

(13:39):
How do you get people movingin the right direction?
If there's a new strategy that'saccompanying all that layoff, , how do
you communicate that and have it stick?
So we've heard from our customers thatare, they've been using Kahoot because
of course, it's a very engaging platform.
And in a time of when people are notfeeling very good then, you know, to play

(14:02):
Kahoot is a very democratic and fun wayto get the spirit , back in action and
hopefully the company back on its feet.
And I think just beingempathetic to the folks that are.
That are left after a layoff.
I don't think that's really ever done.
I think it's mostly like,okay, you survived the layoff.

(14:26):
You should be happy withthat and let's move on.
But the reality is there's alingering feeling about that.
And there, there needs to betools and solutions that sort
of help people move past that.
And hopefully become productive again.
And I, again, we've heard this fromour customers who have used it.
I've been working here atKahoot for 8, 9 years now.

(14:46):
I'm always blown away at all of thedifferent ways that our customers actually
tell us that they actually use Kahoot.
And this is one of them, thiswas just like, Hey, we had
some layoffs at our company.
We thought Kahoot, would bea great way to get people
back in the saddle, so to speak.
And hopefully feeling a little bitbetter about the direction forward.
And that was an insight I would

(15:09):
say.
Absolutely.
And as you say, it's not somethingthat's often thought about for
people and particularly theimpact on different generations.
Some older generations may haveseen it before, younger generations,
first time not seeing it.
And with the choices they haveas well, they just go, I'm gonna
get outta here before I'm let go.
And
it's, it's just a veryinteresting article.

(15:31):
, But let's move on.
'cause I wanted to just sharea couple of things that.
Would be maybe practical takeawaysfor our listeners, because some
of them are college professors,school leaders, et cetera.
And you mentioned here.
That you can use Kahoot in differentways, but if somebody wanted to
get started tomorrow, say, let'stake a few different users here.

(15:51):
So let's start with the teacher.
So how do you get started?
You talked about their
Right.
and discussion in the classroom, andthen we'll move maybe to somebody in
l and d or organizational learning.
I mean, you know, again, we've beenaround since 2012 and we have our
mission is making learning Awesome.
As part of that, we are deeply committedto making sure that teachers everywhere

(16:16):
have a fantastic free version of Kahoot.
So any teacher today can go tocoot.com, sign up for free, and then
start using Kahoot from day one.
Now, the kinds of things they'lldo with it to begin with are
typically very basic kind of review.

(16:37):
So that's the number one use case todo it at the end of a, for example,
chapter or, something like that.
They could use it for an icebreaker.
So if you have a new class or, somekind of way to, maybe it's with, adults
who could have professional development.
it's used really well there.

(16:59):
Kouts also used for synchronouslearning as well, so a lot
of people don't know that.
They think it's only live.
In the classroom or live training,but it's actually used quite
extensively for asynchronoussort of self-directed learning.
In fact, we have many studentsaround the world who are using
K for studying on their own.
So one of the things a teacher can dois of course, create a Kahoot share

(17:23):
it with the students after a classor maybe before class if they're doing
a blended learning type of thing toactually ensure that the kids are
either really up to speed on atopic before they go into the classroom,
or of course to follow up after, tomake sure to reinforce that learning.
So that's the K 12 experience.
And of course we have lotsof game-based game modes.

(17:46):
We call them if you're not.
If you don't wanna do the standard quiz,we have a whole bunch of many different
ways you can use the same Kahoot sothat it never gets boring or dull.
Now, on the higher ed side the higher eda lot of people don't know this as well,
that KU can be used for presentations.
we actually created, a newmode specifically for higher

(18:06):
ed called lecture mode.
Which will , you could use AI forthis, but it'll just spin your any
presentation that you might have andit'll just add some interactivity to it.
Either co questions or use it witheither co questions or it can actually add
or discussion points or things like that.

(18:28):
so a lot of a lot of educators inhigher ed are using code that way.
CO is also if you, as part ofthe upgraded CO EDU package it
integrates with any LMS.
And, you can do things like playerID on in the higher ed side if you
wanna do things like attendanceand, and those sorts of things.
So those are more like, adminfunctionality, but they're also pretty

(18:50):
interesting, I think for teacherswho want to have a little bit more.
Understanding on the analyticsside of how kids are, or how
are my students learning or not?
And Sean, last one for you, and I'm beingselfish here as a lecturer, so this year
I. Had the same realization you mentionedthere, where I put less emphasis on the
assay and more on the group presentation.

(19:13):
So
Yep.
The marks changed for those things.
I'm now, as you said, more interestedin how do I ensure more audience
engagement where like you said,they're building their own Kahoots.
They're also teaching each other inways, and I'd love you to share that.
So for people who in there whoare maybe teaching to 25-year-old,

(19:36):
30-year-old students, what can theydo that's different in an age of.
Oh yeah.
So for students so one of the greatthings is with ai is that you can just
take a picture of your notes, for example.
And that picture you can upload toKahoot and it will spin that all of your

(19:59):
notes into a study AI or study Kahoot.
And if you're in a group youcan share that to a group.
And of course, if everybodydoes the same thing, then let's
say there's five students whowere in a study group together.
Each of them made.
One Kahoot from their notes.
Then all of a sudden you havequite a lot of study material

(20:20):
that you can share around.
And it's of course very engaging andhopefully, hopefully will help you prepare
for any exam or tests that you have.
So that's the way we'reseeing it being used today.
So either it's being used bystudents to just study on their own.
Again, AI is a. Kid kids are not goingto students, 25-year-old student, is.

(20:42):
gonna spend a whole lot of time makinga Kahoot, but they'll certainly upload,
all of their notes quickly to Kahoot.
And they'll, and the Kahoot willjust make it all for them, all of the
study cos that they need, and again,Kahoot's all about social learning.
So that group element of being ableto share with a group and have that
sort of interaction with each otheras you learn together, I think is

(21:04):
really a key differentiator for Kahootin the higher ed side of things.
Sean, any final thoughts in thisage of AI and rapid change with
regards to the education system?
And also I'd love you to sharewhere people can find you.
I think in this age of ai, it'salso important to remember that,

(21:24):
for Kahoot at least, our missionis around making, learning awesome.
Everybody knows Kahootis an engaging platform.
But what they may not know is,we really try to underline the
learning and make learning awesome.
And everything we do isbuilt around pedagogy.
and we're really making sure thatwe're thinking through whatever
we build on the platform ithas to drive a learning result.

(21:46):
and so that, I think that's, a key.
Takeaway , for your audience andhopefully for yourself as well, it's
not just fun and games, it's actuallyabout driving learning outcomes.
And that's really important for us.
and then once again, as a followup, it's the easiest thing to
do is just to go to Kahoot.com.
Create an account andthen just get started.
It's as easy as that.

(22:06):
You can, sign up , and just startmaking a Kahoot and hopefully start
playing a Kahoot the same day.
It's that easy.
.Chief Solutions Officer at Kahoot.
Sean Patrick Darcy,thank you for joining us.
Thank you so much for having me,and hopefully everybody out there
can get their Kahooting going.
Thanks for joining us on Inside Learning.

(22:28):
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Visit learnovate center.org to find outmore about our research on the science
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