Digital Delights - Digital Tribes

Components of Gamifying the Classroom

There are several aspects of video-game design that can be incorporated into the gamified classroom. Here are several:

1. Points: In video games, users gain points as the travel through their quests. The more time they invest in the game the more points they earn. They also earn points for completing certain tasks, playing for a certain time, and gathering certain items. In a gamified classroom, points can take the place of grades. As a student gathers experience and time with a certain concept, they earn points.
2. Badges: Badges are public recognition of achievement, with each one designed with a specific achievement in mind. Other players can see which badges another person has been awarded. In the classroom, badges mark a student’s completion of a lesson or mastery of material. Badges can be explained beforehand, though some badges can be randomly awarded to keep interest levels high.
3. Levels: As a game goes on, players progress through levels that get progressively more difficult. In the classroom, levels could be lessons, or even units of study.
4. Appointments: Thanks to the Internet, people playing a video game in the US can sign in and team up with players all over the world. Video game players can set up certain times to meet up with their friends, or even strangers, to work together to defeat a villain or clear a level. In the classroom, appointments can be made with the teacher or other students and act as check-ins. Students can receive additional assignments or feedback to help them complete their work during their appointments.
5. Bonuses: Most games have hidden, unexpected rewards. Bonuses help drive player loyalty and keep them playing day in and day out. People get obsessed with earning extra points, finding useful items, or skipping levels. In the classroom, bonuses can also be unexpected rewards. Students can earn bonuses such as a homework free night or a two-day extension on a project.
6. Infinite play: In many video games, players keep playing until they finish a level. They might lose points, or access to valuable items if they are attacked, but they are still able to keep playing. In classrooms, infinite play is allowing students to keep working on a lesson or skill until they achieve mastery, even if the rest of the class has moved on.

(...)

How to Gamify Your Classroom

The process of actual video game development includes design, programming, graphic design, sound engineering, copy editing, project management, and testing. The process is so involved, it’s unlikely that a teacher would have the time or budget to create their very own digital learning quest. So instead, we’ve come up with some tips to easily add aspects of gamification to your classroom (or, as this NEA Today article calls it, making your classroom “game-inspired.”)

1. Backwards planning: Any teacher familiar with Understanding By Design has already got a leg up in gamification. To start gamifying your classroom consider the end first. What is the goal? How will you get kids there? What evidence will you collect along the way? Classroom game design includes designing learning activities that lead to the desired outcome, measuring progress, and collecting evidence of learning.
2. Use what’s available: Classcraft is a free, online educational role-playing game that teachers can personalize for their lessons. It includes progress monitoring and reporting for teachers, making the gamification process much more simple than going out on your own. Other online applications for education are applicable to gamified classrooms, like Duolingo, the language learning game, Goalbook, which helps students with IEPs track their progress toward goals, and Kahoot, a game-based questions and answer platform.
3. Gamify one aspect: Rather than attempting to create an entire game with quests and hidden bonuses, start small. Gamify grading by turning assignments into experience points. Gamify homework by creating individual quests. Gamify personalized learning by allowing students to work on a skill until they’ve achieved mastery. Use badges to signify achievement. Allow students to create their own badges. Classbadges lets you download premade badges or design class-specific ones.
4. Establish a marketplace: Allow students to buy, sell, swap, trade with each other and with you. Maybe students can swap a badge for an open-book test, or use points to purchase a homework-free night.
5. Allow leveling up: If a student has mastered the material in a lesson, offer fun and engaging extension work.
6. Just dive in: It can be difficult to know when your gamified classroom plan is ready for students, but the best advice is to just try it out. That’s how your students play video games – they power up the machine and just start playing, figuring out many important rules and lessons along the way.