Gamification, Game-Based Learning and Your Classroom Part 1: Gamification

Gamification, Game-Based Learning and Your Classroom Part 1: Gamification

This year we will start a book study with the book ‘Power Up Your Classroom’ by Lindsey Blass & Cate Tolnai. Last year I met both amazing educators at ISTE and it inspired me to purchase their book so I can help each of you reimagine your classroom and classroom environment through Gameplay. Before we begin though, I thought I would share with you my understandings of both Gamification and Game-Based Learning so that when we are moving through the chapters, you can see my thought processes. I have done a lot of research in this area over the last couple of years, as you will see in my upcoming Blogs.

As you follow along in the posts, I encourage you to get the book, read along with me and ask your questions and respond to my thoughts. We will start the book study with the March 17th blog.

First, what I think Gamification is:

Gamification is using game design elements and game principles in your classroom instruction. This idea is starting to take the educational world by storm. Think about this… do you have a rewards card to places like Speedway, Red Robin, or Advanced Auto Parts store or do you have apps on your phone for places like Moe’s, Dunkin Donuts, and Starbucks? These are just a few examples of how our life is gamified. We can take that same approach in our classroom environment.

Gamification

Here are a few benefits to Gamifications:

  • Better Learning Experience: This can add a lot of fun to your classroom while keeping engagement at the forefront. When it’s done well, it seems natural and increases recall and retention to your content. (Content is truly king, great gamification fails without good content)
  • Better Learning Environment: It creates an environment that can be effective in reaching all students. The environment is one that can be controlled, a monitored space where students can engage in real life situational learning, which contributes to better retention.
  • Instant Feedback: This is one of my favorite benefits. Students can thrive when they receive timely and actionable feedback they can use. Sometimes, students get feedback days after an assignment or assessment is given and at that point, they have lost interest in improving what they have done.
  • Prompting Behavioral Change:  When we think about creating positive habits in our students for behavior, worth ethic, and study habits we need a strategy that rewards the students for doing the right thing. We are developing these students to become our future and if we can instill positive intrinsic habits, we are doing something right. To get there though we need to put levers in place to promote this change, mainly through extrinsic rewards like points, badges and creating leaderboards. 

Classroom Effects

Gamification is exciting because it is engaging for students while also allowing teachers to easily track students’ progress through data collection. When it comes to games, students have a higher tolerance for failure because the game doesn’t judge them (or at least to them it doesn’t feel like judgement), they are more willing to ask for help from classmates when they are stuck (hello, collaboration), and there is also the competition aspect of playing games to get the highest score possible.

One positive effect of gamification is the idea that the student willingly tries and fails and continues to try when completing an assignment.  The idea that we can change our abilities and thinking can be developed with practice, this is the Growth Mindset. Growth mindset happens when we see challenges and failures as an opportunity to better ourselves and where failure is acceptable and encouraged and seen as a sign of growth in our intelligence. Edison once said that he didn’t fail 200 times but instead, found 200 ways not to make a lightbulb. By taking the gamification mindset into the everyday classroom, we encourage our students to make better choices.

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Upcoming Posts

In the next few weeks, we will look at ways to Gamify our classroom, along with specific action steps teachers can take to get started. We will also look at the difference between Gamification and Game-Based Learning (two separate approaches that have a few things in common).

I will leave you with this thought: While Gamification sounds like an awesome way to learn (by many accounts it is), it is not a magic bullet for your classroom instruction and student learning. Creating systems of rewards in the classroom is good, if done correctly. When you don’t follow through with Badges, Points and Leaderboards it becomes a hindrance within the classroom.

Resources

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