Week 11 - Gamification in Education

I feel I should start this post with a bit of a disclaimer - I am pretty much the target market for gamification and it is so up my alley that I may be a little biased on the topic. Gamification is essentially the application of principles of video game design to other areas of life. How can that not be awesome!? Gamification has already had a significant impact on my own life in the area of fitness and personal health. I don't actually understand how people used to exercise before the invention of digital tracking apps. I have had a lot of success with apps like Fitocracy (very much based on a game with levels, points and badges) and Fitbit (utilises competition with others and a badge system) for keeping myself motivated to achieve fitness goals. Not to mention my all time favourite, and highly gamified, Zombies, Run!

Anyhow, I digress. But I can certainly attest to the fact that applying these principles can have a motivating effect in a real life context. It would follow, then, that it could be an very relevant approach to try in education.

To start, we briefly looked at the Fun Theory, which in essence says "fun can change behaviour for the better". I definitely agree with this! Check out the piano stairs video below:

Gamification is something that is becoming increasingly prominent in our every day lives. I have already cited the fitness world but there are many more examples. For example rewards programmes like Fly Buys, or the supermarket collection promotions like the dominoes. Seth Priebatsch outlined four critical elements of game design in his TED talk:

We also talked about the idea of 'flow'. This is a term used to describe the perfect level of engagement in a task, when it is just challenging enough to stop you getting bored, without being so difficult that you give up. Video games typically are excellent at this in their structure of teaching you how to play the game. This video sums up the concept:

This led to quite a lengthy discussion about intrinsic vs extrinsic motivation. We looked at a blog post by Kathy Sierra who cautioned heavily against gamification due to it creating an over reliance on extrinsic motivation and children who lose interest in extending themselves. We asked questions like - does extrinsic motivation have a place? Is the learning still valid if it was only achieved in order to receive a reward? Our general feeling was that while of course intrinsic was the ideal, in reality we are never going to be motivated to do everything by ourselves - this is true for adults so why would we have a different view for children? Is my half hour run any less beneficial for my health and well being because I did it to escape zombies? I do, however, think we are right to be a little cautious and reward systems can end up taking over somewhat. It is always a balance and we need to make sure the focus is on the learning and not the outcome.

Badge systems are a particular way to record achievement and learning. Badges have been used long before the digital world, however now that you can create them online a lot more avenues have opened up for their use. It is an area that can be perfect for the classroom, but also for our own professional development as teachers. A couple of websites to check out:

Badgeville
Mozilla Open Badges
Credly

Badges can make it very easy to identify what a student (or anybody) has achieved. Their real benefit also comes with recognising learning that would not normally be assessed or formally recorded. We discussed this within the context of this course and what badges we could design around our learning. Our key point around this was to acknowledge what we are doing outside of the formal, written assessments. For example for doing the weekly readings, having valuable discussions in the sessions, engaging in social media, employing new techniques in our classrooms, and most importantly - remembering to bring chocolate to class!

My Credly design for remembering weekly chocolate:

Gamification is an absolutely huge topic which we only briefly scratched the surface of. It is something I have a keen personal interest in and would love to employ aspects of in the classroom, so I've definitely earmarked it for future research. Fun to be had by all!