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Gamification in education is a somewhat contentious subject, as so many colleagues see it as letting students ‘play ‘for vast portions of their lesson, and seeing as exam season is always just around the corner in some context or another, they don’t have time to let students ‘mess around’. Though this attitude is quite common, I believe that it is shortsighted and overlooks the value that gamification can bring to a learning environment. A student’s learning experience can be enhanced with this less traditional method, and many educators concur that they have observed increased levels of motivation and engagement amongst students who have used games in an educational setting.
Educational games, used alongside traditional methods can allow students to access contents and concepts in a range of creative and engaging ways. One of my recently graduated Diploma History students had considerable knowledge of weapons, battles and tactics in the Second World War and the Cold War due to playing Call of Duty for many hours. He used some of this knowledge in his examinations when answering questions about the course of Cold War.
Our Year 10 students currently play the online simulation game Nation States, along side their classroom based lessons, during a unit about Government Systems. The game offers the opportunity for collaboration, strategic planning, decision-making, consideration of political ideas and human rights etc. The students become extremely engaged in the task, and with careful supervision from their teacher, they are able to develop their own country and gain a deeper understanding of how countries are run. In short, playing this game brings new insights and engagement to a topic that could otherwise be quite advanced and unfamiliar for a number of our students.
Extra Credit, the creator of this series of videos discusses the benefits of gaming for both students and teachers, particularly in regard to how quickly teachers can give, and students can receive, feedback. He argues that games provide teachers with data about their students and the right games can provided challenges specific to the needs of an individual student. This means that students can get individualized activities that deepen their understanding of the topic covered, as well as highlighting the strengths and weaknesses of the student to the teacher. Extra Credit acknowledges the time and effort that is required to make a game have this kind of educational value, but he is certain about the benefits these games can bring to teaching and learning. He presents a convincing argument.
This point is corroborated in this article by Jennifer Zaino, in which Wanda Meloni, a senior analyst at M2 Research, states, “A nice thing about gamification is that it provides metrics, so that you can pretty easily see as a trainer or educator just how a user or participant is progressing through a particular process.”
Zaino then goes on to reference Rochester Institute of Technology’s Andrew Phelps, who makes the interesting point that “rewards and recognitions earned during game play must be carefully considered… one thing we learned through some informed thinking coming out of other systems we’ve worked on is that if users get those extrinsic, pointless gold stars, then over time not only do they lose value, but you wind up also actually demotivating someone in terms of their desire to engage.”
This is something important to consider. As part of the Wellbeing unit I am currently creating about Cyber Safety, I went to interview students about what they would like to do in the unit, and how they would like to show evidence of their learning. They said that they wanted to play games. I spent a lot of time researching cyber safety games on the Internet but many of them were so tenuously linked to cyber safety, that I could not see any value in including them. Playing these games would neither benefit the student, nor the teacher. They simply filled up some time as students ‘won’ little gold coins by chasing around a virtual world in a Sonic The Hedgehog style. Consequently these games were not included, though I have included a couple of games from the Carnegie Cyber Academy.
When considering further criticisms of gamification, Glover argues that games may not always motivate high achieving students, and can become addictive to students with a certain personality type. I believe that these are valid points, yet with carefully monitoring of the chosen game, and of student progress in the game, teachers should be able to make judgement calls about the value for each student in playing the game, and adjust their expectations of participation accordingly. This also fits with Glover’s suggestion of a “parallel assessment route” for students.
As a History/Humanities teacher, games that teach “critical thinking skills, evaluation and interpretation skills” (Schrier), are what I feel would be most useful to my students and myself as a teacher. There are not many games out there yet, that fulfill this criteria but as more and more emerge, I am certain that the lasting effects of gamification in our classroom will be far-reaching and impactful for both the student and the teacher.
