Gamification in Education

What is gamification?

Gamification is defined as the practice of making activities more like games in order to make them more interesting and enjoyable. This would therefore means incorporating game elements, for instance, like point and reward systems as incentives for people to participate in an activity. Gamification therefore is the application of game design elements and principal s in non game contexts in order to encourage people to take part. Gamifying education content could also have a lot of benefits in the learning outcomes. And now teachers are starting to realize the advantages, too.

 The benefits of gamification in education

Below are some major benefits of using gamification in the teaching and learning process.

1. Gamification reduces learners’ fear of failure

As much as failure  may be perceived as an integral part of learning,in the classroom it tends to be a source of diminished self esteem. The learner feels dejected and may end up with a wrong attitude towards that particular subject.

However, if you observed  the same  learner constantly replaying a video game despite several wrong moves, you’ll know games change this dynamic. They don’t just make “missing the mark” seem  OK /”keep trying”– they also make it part of the fun.

Now, if well harnessed, gamification in education could have the same benefits. In a report by Soman  et al found out  that gamification encourages learners  to fail and reattempt learning tasks without embarrassment. This persistence goes hand in hand with academic progress, and it also develops the grit and resilience our learners  need for adult life. Hence ,it is equally a great tool in teaching life skills to our learners.

2. Gamification makes learning visible

The fact that a learner is able to observe their progress as they go on with the process towards completion, this may be termed as “making the learning visible”. Whether it’s a progress bar at the top of the screen or levels yet to be completed, it’s never difficult for a student to know how far they have gone and the score,and how much more they are required to cover to score as highest as possible. Students struggle to get the same clarity in learning journeys when they can’t clearly see what’s ahead of them.

When teachers use gamification in the  learning process, they solves this problem by making progress visible. This might be through:

        a).points or marks earned progressively

         b).progress bars showing tasks already covered

         c)an outline of the learning/course content

         d)personalized goal-setting mechanisms (e.g. choosing to complete a certain number of activities per day).

With this visibility, learners can easily assess the next steps required and take stock of how far they have progressed in their learning – at any given time. They are able to tell their scores as at that particular time and how much more they need to work towards completion of the activities or course.

3. Gamification increases learner motivation

A lot of learners get demotivated and distracted several times during a lesson especially when dealing with “difficult concepts “. Learners who could  barely be bothered picking up a pen in class, may display a huge interest and change in attitude and often stop at nothing to succeed when they are playing on the computer if the same content was gamified.

This is a result of the fact that games drive high levels of motivation. For example, a 2006 study of video gaming identified three motivational factors that lead players to try and try again. They include:

i.) Accomplishment: players want to excel and demonstrate content mastery over the challenges of the game.

ii.) Collaboration: players are motivated by the collaboration and team work involved in the games.

iii.) Discovery and participation: players are motivated to discover new aspects of the game and create personal experiences through role-play and discovery.

It may be observed that gamification in the classroom uses these factors to motivate students in the learning process hence they are  pushed to keep striving for progress even when the going gets tough ,but in a learner friendly approach.

4. Gamification feels familiar

Many of our  learners are already familiar with gamification though not necessarily in matters education. Having grown up  in an era of  video and card games, most will see gamified learning as an intuitive system that doesn’t need a lot of teacher centered instructions. It also helps that gamified learning minimizes ambiguity, as it’s built around simple rules that need to be followed in a “Do It Yourself “approach.

From the teacher’s end, this makes gamification relatively straightforward from a classroom management perspective. Once they get the basic fundamental rules, learners can learn with games independently .This  also empowers students. With a learning activity that feels personal and  natural, learners  feel confident and in control of their own progress and achievements.

5. Gamification helps in cognitive development

One  study report  in  2013 by Blumberg & Fisch  showed that, games that arouse the skills in critical thinking and problem-solving could highly improve learners’ processing and information retention abilities. Most educational games fit  into this category if correctly developed .As the learning process becomes increasingly digital, gamified learning can leverage the cognitive benefits of video games, to the advantage of the learner. These include, increased dimensional perception ,improved attention and ability to mentally visualize  from multiple perspectives.

Another  report from a study conducted in 2014 study from the American Psychological Association found that these skills derived from video games are lasting and transferable to success in other domains, such as STEM subjects.

6. Gamification makes learning a personal experience

As technology keep on evolving, it is true that, players in digital gamified platforms willingly spend  a lot of money  on custom outfits, tools, and weapons for their game characters .For instance,consider this,why spend real money on a tiger suit for a video game character? The answer is ,because doing so makes the game uniquely theirs,meaning they own the game. It gives a sense of pride, ownership, and identity .If this is correctly infused into education content and syllabus,it could  be the ticket to the personalized learning teachers have been talking about for years. We can use the same principles in our classrooms by:

a) Allowing learners set the rules of a learning game

b) Giving them /letting them create a character to control in a gamified learning program

c) Assisting them create systems to track their own progress.

Therefore, it can be observed that making learning personal through gamification boosts engagement, and it also shows students that the learning journey belongs to them.

Teachers should notice this change when learners  start taking extra initiatives – like asking if you have  got any more activities they could do to practice, or chasing high scores at home even when you have not set any assignments .At this point  they will  have owned the process and the outcome.

7. Gamification boosts engagement

While  all these benefits are good news for teachers, chances are  your learners will be interested in one thing above everything  else. That will be: Making learning fun. That said,they may not be thinking about cognitive development, personalization, or  content mastery – but they will be thinking about the points they need to buy a new outfit for their avatar/character in the game.

As much as this may feel divorced from the traditional way of learning and teaching, teachers understand that, every level passed and challenge completed is one more step on the learner's journey towards understanding .One more step towards achievement of desirable outcomes.

In conclusion, we will purpose to embrace change as it is the only constant in all spheres of life education included.A question for the teachers/educators,is it time to put gamification into practice in curriculum delivery?