The Ramification of Gamification in Education

by Kathy Belcher

“Games are the most elevated form of investigation.”    

 - Albert Einstein

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 

·         Classroom-aid.com (2013). How to Design Mobile Game-Based Learning (#GBL, #mlearning) – Part I. Retrieved October 18, 2013, from http://classroom-aid.com/2013/10/18/how-to-design-mobile-game-based-learning-gbl-mlearning-part-i/

·         Gamification Examples (2012). Gamification Pitfalls: Badge Fatigue and Loyalty Backlash. Retrieved October 23, 2013, from Gamificationexamples Website http://gamificationexamples.com/

·         Gamification Wiki (2010). Gamification. Retrieved October 21, 2013, from Gamification Wiki Website: http://gamification.org/wiki/Gamification

·         GeekWire (2011). Bill Gates pledges $20M to support game-based learning. Retrieved October 28, 2013, from GeekWire Website:

http://www.geekwire.com/?s=bill+gates+pledges+%2420+M+to+support+game-based+learning

·         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

·         Meredith (2011). 3 Reasons NOT to Gamify  Education. Retrieved October 24, 2013, from LearnBoost Blog Website:  https://www.learnboost.com/blog/3-reasons-not-to-Gamify-education/

 

·         Wikipedia (2013). Gamification. Retrieved October 25, 2013, from Wikipedia Website: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamification