by Kathy Belcher
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“Games are the most elevated form of investigation.”
- Albert Einstein
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Cluster Specialist
Manufacturing and STEM
Introduction
Wouldn’t it be great to have a classroom full of engaged, motivated, and
loyal students having fun and solving real-world problems? Gamification, a term coined by Nick Pellar in 2002, could be the key.
In the past decade, Pellar’s original definition has evolved into several
variations. One variation I favor has particular relevance in the classroom: “gamification
is the process of taking something that already exists—a website, an enterprise
application, an online community—and integrating game mechanics into it to
motivate participation, engagement, and loyalty” (Bunchball, 2013). By purposefully integrating game mechanics into
your online lesson plans, activities, and classroom websites, you can achieve
desired behaviors from your students.
Who Uses it and
Why?
According to Van Grove (2011), “gamification has been
widely applied in marketing. Over 70% of Forbes Global 2000 companies plan to
use gamification for the purposes of marketing and customer retention.” It has
also been used as a tool for customer engagement and for encouraging desirable
website usage behavior. One website, DevHub, announced they have increased the
number of users who completed their online tasks from 10% to 80% after adding gamification elements (Wikipedia, 2013). It can potentially
be applied to any industry and almost anything to create fun and engaging
experiences, converting users into players, such as, business, art, entertainment,
environment, design, government, health, life, marketing, mobile, news, social good,
commerce, web, work, and education (Gamification Wiki, 2010). “The Bill &
Melinda Gates Foundation pledged $20 million to support new ‘game-based
learning’ applications in math, English, and science, incorporating social
networking platforms and other online tools to help kids learn” (GeekWire, 2011).
Games vs.
Gamification
“Gamification isn’t about turning your site into a game; it’s
about incentivizing the right behavior that is aligned with your business goals”
(Gigya, 2012), or your classroom goals. It works because it leverages the
principles of rewards and incentives to help create customer action, while it
subtly taps into one’s competitive nature. Think about the many loyalty
programs that encourage you to play their games, and the social recognition you
receive to help promote a brand or content, while you are having fun (Gigya 2012). Remember when J.C.
Penney’s took away the coupon game in exchange for a “Square Deal”? They
encountered a backlash from customers and were forced to give the game back. You
can “gamify” curriculum and offer rewards, recognition, and social standing for
participating in website activities, discussion boards, and blogs. There are
numerous online educational games that can be linked to the website and used to
keep students engaged and motivated to learn.
Game Mechanics
“Applying game mechanics skillfully is almost a
fail-proof way to engage students and incentivize learning” (Meredith, 2011). Well-structured and carefully designed
gameplay is an excellent motivator because it is fun to play (win, and even
lose), as long as it is made voluntary and intrinsically motivating (Gamification
Examples, 2012). Bunchball (2013) asserts that gamification is built upon 10
primary game mechanics you can integrate into your curriculum and classroom
website for desired results:
1.
Immediate feedback or response to actions
2.
Transparency to show users where they stand on
metrics that matter
3.
Goals to achieve (short and long-term)
4.
Badges as evidence of accomplishments or mastery
of a skill
5.
Status within a community
6.
Video games train you to play as you play; users
learn by doing
7.
Competition and how you are doing compared to
others (as individuals or in teams)
8.
Collaboration to connect users as a team to
accomplish larger tasks, drive competition, and encourage knowledge sharing
9.
Community to give meaning to goals, badges,
competitions
10.
Points, measureable evidence of accomplishments
Online games provide students with immediate feedback,
clear rules to achieve goals, a narrative or story that engages students, and
tasks that are challenging but achievable to motivate students to move to the
next level. Integrating game mechanics into your course content and classroom
websites serve to engage, motivate, and keep your students coming back for more.
In the whitepaper, Gamification
Five Plays for Winning the Game, the authors identify five keys to succeed
at keeping customers engaged and getting them to return to your website again
and again. Most of these keys to success apply to education as well. (Gigya
2012)
1. Encourage more user-generated content and feedback with comments,
ratings, and reviews, and reward top commenters
2. Savvy sharing (not just clicking, but having a purpose) where users
work toward a larger goal of ranking on sites such as Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn
3. Feedback rewards users for sharing content on the website
4. Social Login is a powerful tool for engagement and it brings an
invaluable ingredient for gamification—the
user’s social graph. Wanting to be a valued and respected part of a community
is a big part of human nature and users are more inclined to participate if
there is a real-world benefit behind the rewards.
5. Scorekeeping- be clear on the rules of the game and the rewards for
participation; users need to know how to advance within the system; rewards
must have meaning and be understood by the entire community; the social value
is prestige and influence. (Gigya
2012)
Encourage student, user-generated content through
discussion boards, blogs, and publications with comments and feedback by
students. Many blogging platforms offer surveys and polls. Tap into social
media technologies allowed by your school district, or consider an alternative
to Facebook, such as Edmodo. Text messages and emails from teachers provide
immediate feedback, recognition, and rewards to students. Think about
innovative methods for keeping score and rewarding performance for
participation.
Gamification
Pitfalls
There are some pitfalls with game mechanics that apply to
industry and education to be aware of when
“gamifying” your course content and classroom websites:
1. Badges and points have a
short shelf life, can’t resuscitate a disengaged online community, and carry
little likelihood of generating long-term customer (student) retention or
activation.
2. Loyalty backlash and disengagement
can occur when a customer (student) realizes their behavior has been
manipulated with no personal gain.
3. There are no quick fixes because
solving problems within a complex environment generally requires more than
simple solutions.
4. Customers (students) need to
be managed, retained, and activate the culture of their community.
5. Online engagement systems
should be self-motivating and self-rewarding and associated with true video
game designs.
6. Leaderboards are damaging and
demotivating towards the culture; the competitive elements don’t make things
more fun or more social.
7) Setting up a strictly
competitive environment does not help to build teamwork and peer interaction (Gamification
Examples, 2012).
Extrinsic motivation can be helpful, but “learning for
the sake of learning” is more sustainable and meaningful than learning for an
extrinsic reward. Students appreciate a straightforward discussion of the rules
and expectations, a solid investment plan, and a big learning goal to work
towards. To be effective for curtailing behavior, the teacher has to convey
what skills need to be rewarded (Meredith, 2011).
How is
Gamification Used in Education?
MIT’s whitepaper, Moving
Learning Games Forward, discusses how to integrate gaming in education.
Good games always involve play, in which a child at play exercises the freedom
to fail, experiment, fashion identities, and have the freedom of effort and
interpretation.
Games in school can be used as
·
Authoring
platforms to produce an artifact (game, video, text, avatar, body of code);
·
Content
systems to deliver understanding about a content area;
·
Manipulating
systems to test theories about how systems work;
·
Trigger
systems to create an experiential context for understanding a topic, issue,
or principle;
·
Gateway
systems to give students experience with technology;
·
Reflective
systems to give contexts for student reflection;
·
POV
systems to take on certain identities and points of view;
·
Code
systems to use writing as the primary game mechanic as mode of action and
experience;
·
Documentary
systems as documentary evidence of student ideas and understanding;
·
Ideological
systems read as texts that express certain underlying ideologies;
·
Research
systems or research activity, which produce material to be used in later
learning experiences; and
·
Assessment
systems for assessing student learning of curricular content or state
standards (MIT, 2009).
Game Elements in
Education
According
to Classroom-aid, “Games should be about the experience of learning, rather
than the experience of being taught.” Many game elements are covered
by learning and gamification expert Karl Kapp in his book, The Gamification of Learning and Instruction: Game-based Methods and
Strategies for Training and Education. Among the elements identified, story
and character are the most important.
Other elements include
·
A story or plot (the premise of the game, and
the scenarios within it);
·
Game play used to attain mastery of the enabling
and terminal learning objectives;
·
Characters that are realistic enough for the
learner to relate to and learn from;
·
Competition, either between the learner and the
game simulator or between a cohort of learners;
·
Recognition and rewards based on achievement
levels attained during the game;
·
Increasing levels of complexity to extend skill
development and imbed the acquired skills;
·
Challenges that build skill mastery and
relevancy to the learner’s performance; and
·
Continual, individualized feedback to reinforce
correct behavior and remediate incorrect behavior (Classroom-aid, 2013).
Summary
Gamification is not about turning the curriculum and
classroom website into a game. It is about integrating game mechanics into the
course content and website to offer fun, educational learning possibilities that
help create a classroom of fully engaged, motivated, and loyal students who are
capable of solving real-world problems and are better prepared for
postsecondary success. Focusing on the proven keys to success and minimizing
the potential pitfalls of integrating game mechanics should result in positive ramifications
for your students.
Are you integrating gamification in your classroom? What
is working? What are some challenges? What should be avoided? Let’s continue
the conversation.
References
·
Bunchball The Leader in Gamification (2013).
What is Gamification? Retrieved October
23, 2013, from Bunchball The Leader in Gamification Website: http://www.bunchball.com/gamification
·
Gamification Examples (2012). Gamification
Pitfalls: Badge Fatigue and Loyalty Backlash. Retrieved October 23, 2013, from
Gamificationexamples Website http://gamificationexamples.com/
·
GeekWire (2011). Bill Gates pledges $20M to
support game-based learning. Retrieved October 28, 2013, from GeekWire Website:
·
Gigya (2012). Gamification five plays for
winning the game. Retrieved October 23, 2013, from Gigya Website: www.gigya.com
·
Klopfer,
E. , Osterweil, S., Salen, K., Haas, J., Groff, J., & Dan Roy (2009). Moving Learning Games Forward Obstacles
Opportunities and Openness. The Education Arcade, Massachusetts Institute
of Technology. Retrieved November 5,
2013, from MIT Website: http://education.mit.edu/papers/MovingLearningGamesForward_EdArcade.pdf
