ABSTRACT
Gamification seems to solve all our
problems in education. Students become engaged and motivated -- they learn so
much more than in the traditional system. Conducting lessons becomes a
pleasure, an adventure, a catharsis! While checking attendance, participation,
quizzes, tasks, assignments, projects, missions, and quests on daily basis is a
bliss. Unfortunately, that is not true. That is only a dream or part of the
advertising campaign of yet another so-called professional and weathered
gamifier. Preparing, organising, and designing gamified courses is not a stroll
in a park. Every teacher must forsake leisure and family time alike unless they
have ample support from colleagues, administration, and IT department.
In reality gamification can be the root
of all evil if done too hastily, too cheerfully, and without prior
understanding of students’ needs, school facilities, and our own abilities.
Gamifying a classroom (or a whole school) is a massive project which should be
managed with all risks, weaknesses, and threats possible to imagine. That is
why it is advisable to know what to expect, what to fear, and what to avoid, in
order to choose the path of righteousness, to master the trade, and to reach
everlasting glory. When discussing gamification in education, we must face
reality, we need to understand what gamification can provide, but also what it
can devour. Educational milieu is too sensitive and our students are too
precious to apply unverified solutions without adequate preparations.
In this article the author will present
his approach to gamification and share some insight into his experience from
designing gamified courses and workshops since 2009. He will concentrate on
hands-on experience, mistakes, and solutions, in order to approach a major
issue: should we introduce gamification in education at all? In conclusion he
will offer a few answers to the question as well as a handful of suggestions
towards the successful introduction of gamification in education.
Gamification is everywhere. When
listening to greatest enthusiasts you could think that the Beatles would sing
today “All you need is gamification.” You can find it in HR, in recruitment, in
sales and marketing, in private and state schools, in kindergartens, and at
universities. It becomes a bit more problematic when trying to find out what
gamification really is, what it is supposed to do, and why it was introduced in
the first place. Quite often the so-called specialists and propagators are
simply sitting on the bandwagon doing what everybody else is doing, i.e. PBLs…
But actually, Points, Badges, and Leaderboards are the root of all evil in
gamification. Games are not about PBLs. They are about actions (measured in
points), about challenges and achievements (represented by badges), and about
communities (stratified in leaderboards). Without delving into those whats and
whys in respect to gamification in general, this article focuses on
gamification in education. The underlying questions remain as, “Should we
introduce gamification in education?” or more precisely “How can we reach
educational goals through gamification without losing teachers engagement?” To
find the answers to those questions, first we need to consider what gamification
is, and what it is not, what it should do for the student and for the teacher.
Only then will we be able to see if gamification is only another fad or not.
What gamification is
We should make sure that when using the
term ‘gamification’ we are talking about the same thing. Gamification
introduces elements of games in non-entertainment environments in order to
enhance engagement and motivation (Lee, Hammer, 2011). This is one of the most
clear and brief definitions possible. Still, it needs some further clarification.
There are many elements of games. If we follow Kevin Werbach’s division, we
should remember that there are game dynamics, mechanics, and components, which
we can utilise in gamification (Gamification;
For the Win...). All of those three
are game elements of different levels, from general rules (dynamics), to more
precise relations (mechanics), and finally specific solutions (components).
When talking about gamification we can relate to some or to all of those
elements.
Secondly, gamification should be
considered as the usage of those elements in the non-entertainment milieu. So
we do not introduce game elements to games, or to playful activities, because
usually these are already entertaining enough. Everyone is already in the state
of flow (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990) on their own accord. Gamification is
introduced where motivation is lacking, where engagement is dwindling, and
where flow belongs to the land of dreams. Somehow, education comes to mind even
though learning should be considered an interesting activity on its own.
Finally, gamification has a reason. It
is not introduced in order to make any activity more interesting. The fun
factor is the path, not the goal. The reason behind gamification must be
extremely clear. By raising motivation and engagement, by designing immersive
experiences, we want to change the behaviour of participants. So in education
we crave for attentive students who ask questions, challenge ready-made
answers, who do homework, but who do not stop at that. We desire students who
become lifelong learners conscious of their achievements and the road to
mastery -- that is the empowerment we seek from gamification in education.
What gamification is not
Following the explanations of Arkadiusz
Cybulski (2014), we could say that gamification is neither of the following:
●
contest
●
loyalty programme
●
3F exploitation
(fun-friends-feedback)
●
game
It is as simple as that and as
difficult as that. In games, hence in gamification, we can use competition. We
can create situations in which players have to challenge each other. But there
are many non-violent, cooperative games. By the same token, gamified solutions
and courses can be completely devoid of contests represented in PBLs. Next,
loyalty programmes are based on collecting points by spending money in order to
collect more points to buy more products... This vicious circle was created by
marketers in order to draw consumers to shops, to keep them, and to exploit them.
But gamification is supposed to make the world a better place (McGonigal). We
want to change habits so that learners learn more, and participants participate
more. In other words, we do not want to create a social network in which the
only goal is collecting information on our client / student / gamer / user in
order to exploit him or her even more. And finally, gamification is not a game.
It seems to be simple to add a game to a product, and to gamify the whole
package, but the game is an additive, not an essential element. Gamification is
best when it concentrates on dynamics and mechanics, when it uses scarce
components but orchestrates them magnificently. A game can be a cherry on a
cake, but definitely it does not go any deeper than the icing.
One more remark. Gamification does not
equal games, educational games, serious games, simulations, games for change,
etc. They all can function together or alongside, but gamification is not any
of those. Probably there is a growing need to introduce serious games,
simulations, and project-based learning in education (Van Eck, 2015), and they
would work magnificently with gamification, but they are separate entities.
What gamification should do
for students
Actually, the first thing to claim is
that gamification should be invisible (Sulaitis). The mechanics of the new
structure should be hidden so that students take everything for granted or
suspend their disbelief. They may see the storyline, they may have fun, but the
true grit should remain unnoticed, working in the background, and making the
whole fun-factor and challenges work smoothly towards the primary goal, i.e.
enhance motivation to learn. The fun factor is the path, and new habits and
achievements are the goal. Gamification should help in reaching them by
“playing” on students needs. According to Yu-kai Chou and his Octalysis, there
are eight main motivations or drives which can be used in gamification to
support student engagement:
- “Epic Meaning & Calling is the Core
Drive where a player believes that he is doing something greater than
himself or he was “chosen” to do something.”
- “Development
& Accomplishment is the
internal drive of making progress, developing skills, and eventually
overcoming challenges.“
- “Empowerment of Creativity &
Feedback is when users are engaged [in] a creative process where they have
to repeatedly figure things out and try different combinations. People not
only need ways to express their creativity, but they need to be able to
see the results of their creativity, receive feedback, and respond in
turn.“
- Social Influence &
Relatedness incorporate “all the social elements that drive people,
including: mentorship, acceptance, social responses, companionship, as
well as competition and envy.“
- “When
a player feels Ownership, she
innately wants to make what she owns better and own even more.”
- Unpredictability &
Curiosity “is a harmless drive of wanting to find out what will happen
next.”
- Scarcity &
Impatience “is the drive of wanting something because you can’t have it.”
- Loss
& Avoidance “is based upon
the avoidance of something negative happening.”
Whether we follow Octalysis or any
other paradigm, it will stress that first we need to know how to push the
buttons of our participants. We need to know what makes them tick, what makes
them do the things they do, and what stops them from doing what we want them to
do. Gamification should allow teachers and educators to design courses and
individual tasks in a way to make students engaged, to keep students in the
flow. In this manner students will become motivated to repeat those actions as
they are felt to be profitable rather than imposed. We create a loop in which
students learn because they feel pleasure, and they repeat activities which in
due course become habitual (Duhigg, The
Power of Habit…, 2012). So to put it bluntly, students become immersed in
the educational environment and they want to remain in the state of constant
bliss.
What gamification should do
for teachers
If gamification could create attentive
students instantly, then there would be nothing else teachers would require.
However, the world is not so perfect. Not all students are so responsive, and
there are different types of personalities answering to different motivations
(cf. Yu-kai Chou’s core drives). This means that what teachers need, is a
plethora of correlated solutions which can engage as many students as possible
in as short time as feasible. But this is the goal, and the tricky part is the
path. As any teacher knows the path is 10-months long each year… Year after
year. So the survival on the path to mastery for students becomes the ultimate
goal for teachers. And here come game elements.
Gamification is supposed to allow
teachers, educators, course designers, headmasters, etc. to prepare curriculum,
syllabi, modules, courses, or even individual tasks in an engaging form thanks
to elements borrowed from games. By looking at the list provided by Yu-kai Chou
or Werbach, it should become relatively easy to invent ways of connecting
tests, homework, and quizzes. Or it can help to see that cooperation and
competition can be implemented in projects or short classroom tasks. Students
can create their own avatars, develop their own individualised skill trees,
resort to repair mechanics, and so on, just like in a game. Teachers do not
even need to know all elements as many tools (Octalysis; GameOn; PlayGen;
Siadkowski, Grywalizacja. Zrób to sam.
Poradnik) explain choices and limit the number of necessary components.
On top of that, there are numerous
gamified Learning Management Systems (LMS), e.g., Classcraft or
gamification-ready LMS like Moodle. As in education teachers need to monitor
and supervise the education process, they are required to give students grades
and feedback. This can be (partially) done through LMS or even Google Apps
(Sobocinski, Mochocki, Gamedek “W
matni”...), which on top of simple PBLs can also handle graphical
representations of achievements, avatars, calendars, can manage ad-hoc teams,
translate grades into life, mana, experience, or action points. So both the
individual elements and their arrangement can be provided at the initial stage
as well as throughout the whole process of education. In short, what
gamification can provide is the extremely efficient utilisation of LMS when
combined with game elements.
What it really means to
prepare a gamified course
Unfortunately, there still is no other
way to prepare a well gamified course, but to be an experienced teacher, course
designer, psychologist, gamer and game enthusiast, programmer, reader, writer,
accountant, etc. It is virtually impossible for a teacher to pick up the
Octalysis and build a course out of it. Same rules follow all other tools and
solutions provided in analogue and digital versions. The pleasantly looking
“GameOn! Toolkit,” based on business canvas, is as inviting as it is annoying.
On one hand it gives numerous mechanics, while on the other it neglects
personal traits and drives. “PlayGen” deals with those much better, but then it
limits the number of choices, and completely neglects story building. ‘Invent
your own narrative’ is not a very helpful advice... And those two tools are
actually well designed!
In the end gamifying courses takes
practice, time, and learning on your own mistakes. Unfortunately, again, the
testing process takes at least one term, which means that you are stuck with bad
choices, or you need to change the rules of the game in the middle of the game.
This is never seen well by participants even if the final result corrects the
initial flaws. In addition. when there is no support from other teachers, you
need to design everything on your own, as there is no brainstorming, no
external perspective, no additional expertise.
What it really means to run a
gamified course
Work, work, work. Managing a complex
system requires constant vigilance and unfathomable amount of daily and weekly
feedback. All of that must be done on top of “normal” preparations, teaching,
and checking homework. For example, using LMS requires everyday updates as
students demand instant feedback. Moreover, it necessitates learning the ropes,
and each system is different even though general rules are similar. Knowing
Moodle will help when dealing with Classcraft, but still there are many new
features which teachers must master -- they are Game Masters now.
Some of the most respected elements
allowing immersion are the narrative, avatars, the physical and visual
representation of everything that is going on in the gamified course. This
necessitates preparing PowerPoint presentations and/or posters and/or news
boards, etc. They can be fully digital or analogue, but again, someone needs to
prepare those. Every single day, the teacher is the someone.
What do we really need in
future
We need appreciation and recognition.
Organising and running a decent gamified course takes much more time than
preparing a “normal” lessons. The worst case scenario will see teachers
devoting 2-3 times more hours to their courses than before. What we need,
ideally, is being rewarded for this additional value. This should not be
equalised, though, with higher remuneration, but rather with fewer teaching
hours and/or smaller student-to-teacher ratio. Teacher Assistants would help a
lot. The whole workload and burden of conducting gamified lessons, which
require so much more expertise, cannot be calculated as for a “normal” course.
Secondly, the support. The best results
are achieved by teams gamifying a group of (interrelated) courses or whole
schools. Without a team, all work falls on an individual, but also noticing and
correcting mistakes again has to be done by the same sorry teacher abandoned by
colleagues and the system. This will not stand. Teachers will avoid
gamification if the stakes are so high. The other part of the support equation
is the IT department. Teachers must be users, not designers, of LMS, of
instantaneous feedback system, of course webpages, etc. Managing all those
takes time and knowledge which teachers do not have or do not need to have. All
in all, taking care of those takes teachers away from their primary job, from
teaching!
Thirdly, we need to open a discussion
and reach some conclusions on rewriting curriculum and syllabi. Adhering to
strict “traditional” frames while applying flexible “new” strategies will only
make things worse. We need to re-train teachers and re-adjust headmasters…
Otherwise we will keep on brushing education with gamification and games,
rather than introducing (and testing) it comprehensively and professionally
with specific and achievable goals in mind. Gamification will work only when
introduced professionally and when supervised. But that is true about every
previous evolution of education.
Conclusion
After designing and conducting gamified
courses since 2009, I can say that I gamified my courses and I hate that… I
hate that I had to do most of the work on my own. I hate that my friends were
left on their own. I hate that there was not enough IT support. I hate that I
had to abandon some fantastic ideas coming from my students, because I had no
time to introduce them into the system. I hate the fact that after gamifying
the whole department my fellow teachers and I spend hours and hours on putting
data in spreadsheets, creating graphs, managing grades and badges, etc. We
spent a mind boggling amount of time on doing everything around the most
exciting and prolific studies we have ever developed -- Gamedec: Game Studies
& Design. I hate the fact that in workshops and discussions, I need to
discourage teachers from fully fled gamification, unless they are IT
specialists or have a full cooperation of their colleagues and administration.
Despite all that, I still gamify my
courses, but I have learnt to do it in a micro scale. I try to consciously add
cooperation here, and competition there. I create simple narratives, which can
be accompanied by meaningful tasks and multiple paths to mastery designed for
different learners. I try to resort to obvious, tactile and visual
representations of the path, points, challenges, etc. So if you ask me what is
the future of gamification in education, I will say it is either full
institutional support or simplicity. Or both. There is also the third path,
student engagement. Teachers can co-design courses and co-run them with their
learners! After all, at the end of the day, who is the biggest specialist in
current technologies? Who has got all gizmos and gadgets? Who gets engaged and
immersed? Students do, so let us take advantage of their expertise, and they
will love it! Yu-kai Chou’s Octalysis would approve.
A second conclusion… We are at the top of the hill. Everyone is excited and everyone wants to be seen at the summit. This means that many solutions have not been tested properly, that many gamified offers have little or nothing to do with gamification, and should be branded as exploitation. We still need to go through the purgatory (Gartner Hype Cycles quoted by Cybulski), to see all the sins and vices of gamification. Only then will gamification be properly studied, analysed, developed and introduced with the aim of making the world a better place (McGonigal, Reality Is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World, 2011)
Gartner Hype Cyles
A third conclusion… Let us all play
games! Video games, role-playing games, and table-top games. Let us incorporate
digital-games based learning, simulations, and serious games (Van Eck) in the
curriculum! Let students modify those games and create their own little
wonders. Let us read interactive fiction. The more we enjoy games on daily
basis, the more we are used to learning through failure, revision, and
successful repetition. Positive attitude towards games and gamification in
“normal” life will eventually open the doors to games and gamification in
education. A well designed system keeps you engaged and appreciates your
failures and advances -- that is the desired feature stressed by gamification
in education. So let us play more games at home and at schools, and then
gamification -- using game elements, not games! -- will become much more
obvious and effective.
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