In my department in my college we teach to the UAL specification. That is there's a unit of learning, which has a number of criteria and then pass/refer markings are applied to them. I have been reading recently on gamification in business and other areas and wondered if there were any merit in using these techniques for teaching. Of course there's a major difference I believe between a classroom and a business. On the whole business is about being competitive while education is is more about co-operation.
We are all told that our students today are digital natives. This has been repeated so many times it is now accepted truth by everyone including the students themselves. By comparison their teachers are lowly digital immigrants. I'm going to call that hogwash. Students are no more 'natives' than their grandparents were. Students spend hours staring at small devices and communicating, their grandparents spent hours staring at the telly and on the phone. In both cases it's consumption of media and chatting. It's just the size, portability and content has changed. Students on the whole and their grandparents are both consumers of content, they neither make or create content. Most students won't ever program the device they are using - nor be able to fix it. If there's a difference, then it's the older (non-teenage) audience is more likely to give up as soon as they are faced with a problem.
Much is also talked about attention spans. Received wisdom is that young people have short attention spans. I'm not sure it's that easy. I teach mature adults. Most times they don't have huge attention spans as well, it's just that they hide it better, and in a classroom situation they can be worse, not better than a group of engaged teenagers. However, that observation aside, we need to keep them engaged, and using game mechanics may be a way of doing that
Engagement is what this is about, and that is where gamification may help."Some researchers are now exploring what children can gain from electronic games, often emphasizing their potential to teach academic skills."(Olson, 2010)
There have been a number of studies which have looked into the games industry to find out why games are so attractive to both children and adults. Many have focussed on addiction, as this is now being recognised as a social issue. Essentially young people can spend hours on games while maybe only short periods for study. In a similar way some groups of adults**, more likely male (30+) will negate other things for games.
Players may play hours upon hours whereas they are not willing to spend more than 15 minutes on doing homework or studying for exams.
However, people confuse gamification with playing games; these two are different things:
- Playing a game is the actual action of playing, i.e. consumption.
- Gamification, on the other hand, looks into games’ mechanism and how those principles can be applied to other things.
Typical game elements
Elements that are often found in games include:- Challenge.
- Chance.
- Competition between player/machine.
- Cooperation between player/machine.
- Player feedback.
- Incremental rewards.
- Winning.
- Progression through levels
How can we apply these elements to teaching?
There are small changes in style, wording and marking that may make changes. You should note that these comments refer specifically to my own practice.
Marking
An issue with the UAL specification. In my opinion is the pass/refer marking for Units 1-7 and the enclosed criteria. Also there's an issue with the whole university spec of "refer". While the FMP aspect (Unit 8) can't be tampered with (and is marked differently); I believe that the rest can be adjusted to suit us and our students better. I think we should be marking like a game:Start with zero points. That is everyone starts at a the bottom. The first screen in the game. The easy one. For a task/brief with typically four criteria they can score one point for each criteria, importantly and differently these points are graded 1 (Pass), 2 (Merit), 3 (Distinction)., although they are not explicitly written as such. When they have all four points they can either move onto the next task/brief or (2) they can repeat the task/brief to try and improve their score. Obviously at some point they will ahve to move on, but it gives high flyers a chance to improve their marks and slower movers a chance to complete.
Personally, I would use big numbers - like pinball machines, so 100, 500, 1000 - or something like that.
Bonus points for almost anything could be added - for example lose points for being late, extra points for extra work. A system of rewards for high flyers or random(-ish) bonus rewards could also be considered. An element of chance, not just skill rewards slower players and is an element in most successful games.
The Unit is a quest with challenges
Students should be challenged by the quest to achieve the unit. The challenges, briefs and tasks, are routes to complete the quest. Their first attempt at learning something should be treated like, and as unimportant as, "Game over" if they struggle. Not a reason to give up or fear failure but a challenge to start over again. A way of increasing motivation.As the quest has several challenges - possibly from different lecturers with different tasks - then it will be possible for them to score the points on different tasks, i.e., not pass/refer on one task only. Special attention should be paid to enable slow/disadvantaged learners earn points. For example turning up having completed outside tasks or even just turning up on time and equipped correctly.
Tracking learning
It's likely that a different method of scoring their achievement will be required. It would be in everyone's interest to make this as centralised, easy and visible as possible.
- Centralised, so that lecturers and students (..and EVs) can easily see how they are doing, both in comparison with others (increase competition) and also their own achievement.
- Easy, because marking systems have in the past been prescriptive, arcane and difficult to navigate.
- Visible so that everyone can see at a glance how they and others are doing.
Conclusion
Is this worth a go? What do you think? Probably it needs more work, would it work in Maths/English where some of our learners struggle?
What do you think?
**Me, I don't play games, have never done much - other than board games - and don't do sport. So I look on from outside.
Bibliography:
Olson, C.K. (2010) Children’s Motivations for Video Game Play in the Context of Normal Development. Available at: https://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/releases/gpr-14-2-180.pdf (Accessed: 7 July 2016).
In-line Citation:
(Olson, 2010)
