Understanding Gamification in Education

World is changing and how?

The all-pervasive technology has transformed the life we lead, The communication and its dissemination, information gathering and its transference, knowledge acquisition and its application has all been changed in front of us.

Education sector being one of the most vulnerable sector owing to its countless stakeholder always get influenced by these milestone changes. On one hand, this is the time when the seamless world is offering myriad teaching-learning processes to the teachers across the globe on the other hand the students sitting in our classrooms are changing. The students, across the world in K-12 and higher education are now spurring debates, demanding reforms and making educationist and policy makers to ponder upon the efficacy of the education system.The students in our class have moved from Millennials to Generation Z - a generation which has never experienced a life without the ‘screen’/technology. Emergence of web 2.0 as a learning-teaching tool for millennials was hailed fervently. It is believed and proven also that the technology-driven learning has actually changed the dynamics of learning acquisition. The belief is also that this method facilitates learning at their own pace, space and time.

Year 2013 was the year of MOOC (( New York Times 2013) )as substitute of traditional classroom teacher. It was thought that courses from Ivy League colleges with their apt content and best practices in teaching-learning will be able to emerge as the next-gen university, but later research suggested that dropout rates were as high as 87 percent. Thus, proving that world class content, in-your-own-pace/place and time can also not titillate the curiosity of the students.

In one of the surveys which author conducted in an Engineering college of Western Region of India, where teachers were asked to describe Successful Class, the teachers define it as – when the students are engaged through out, most of the definition indicated one way or other a class as successful when students are active, participative and have shown curiously to learn.

Thus, how can we motivate student to learn becomes less important and how to create conducive environ where students get motivated themselves becomes a challenging and important question.

Teachers around the world are trying to see the philosophy and science of learning and try to adopt and adept that methods that can create these conditions. From Sage on the stage to Guide by the Side, teachers are transforming themselves and evolving themselves. It has shifted the paradigm of Teaching as a reverent act to learning as a fun thing .

Learning as Fun:

Games especially online games and their addictions have created a 99.6 Bn industry, it has 58 percent of users from Asia-pacific region (source: https://newzoo.com/resources/).Theaverage age of the gamer is 32 years and 25 percent of the users are below 18 years and 49 percent of them are from the age group 18-49 years.

The popularity of games astonishes people. The addiction and its playtime from couple of hours to months in end talks about its grip and strong engagement with the gamers. In one of the research study, gamers were asked why they play games? The top answers were that they provide challenge, creativity and winning. Other outcomes were social environment, friends, problem-solving, random surprises, exploration, imagination, sharing, teamwork, role playing, recognition and last but not the least triumphing!

“ You create these communities around the game that do an incredible amount of intellectual work, and when they’re done with the work, they will leave the game and go to another game that’s more challenging. Can you imagine if we had that kind of environment in classrooms?

— Constance Steinkuehler Squire,Associate professor in digital mediaCo-director of the Games+Learning+SocietyCenter at the University ofWisconsin-Madison,

What is Gamification?

Basically gamification is the use of game elements and game design techniques in non-game contexts. It is putting boring things in games context. It also means incorporating game dynamics into teaching content, pedagogy, assessment, in order to spur participation.

Why Again:

According to Daniel Pink( 2011) two types of motivation moves the person to perform their task- intrinsic motivation and extrinsic motivation. Where Intrinsic motivation involves engaging in behavior because it is personally rewarding; essentially, performing an activity for its own sake rather than the desire for some external reward. Extrinsic Motivation referring to behavior that is driven by external rewards such as money, fame, grades, and praise. This type of motivation arises from outside the individual, as opposed to intrinsic motivation, which originates inside of the individuals. It has proven that only intrinsic motivation makes person more engaged in the task. Rewards like good marks, placements and other achievements works but not to that extent.

"If we build a game in which someone is demotivated or disengaged for 45 seconds, we know we need to improve." One CEO of a game company.Forty-five seconds! Imagine , if we can improve education this way.

Creating Intrinsic Motivation through Games:

Yu- Koi Chou is one of the initiator in gamification in real life. He proposes his Octalysis theory to add games elements in various tasks. The octalysis theory is used widely by game designers and games developer to make moreengaging games. He calls these elements as Core drives( You-Koi Chou 2015). They are: 

Epic Meaning and calling- It means that you need to make the person feel bigger than he is. This makes them feel more important and in control. This epic meaning in classrooms can be projects which can save lives or improve the lives of the people.

Development & Accomplishment: It is internal determination for progress, honing skills, and ultimately overcoming challenges. The overcome of challenge is rewarded. This core drive stress upon challenge and encourages reward only after overcoming it. The rewards can be points, badges,leader boards (also known as PBLs).

Empowerment: Enabling through Creativity & Feedback means users are engaged in a creative process in which they constantly try different permutation and combination to build things. He emphasis upon giving the feedback and respond in. He gives example of Lego, block building and painting as a highly fun yet fulfilling activity which does not need any other dynamic to make it more engaging.

Ownership and Possession:

One of the most strong drive, it addresses the basic need of human being and that is owning something. Fulfilling this desire player want to make it better and better as they feel responsible and accountable for it. This gets exhibited in making and updating profiles of themselves or making resumes too.

 Social rapport: This drive again addresses the basic human nature that is social influence or good will generation. This should make people to experience mentorship, approval, social responses, camaraderie, along with healthy competition and desire to outdo others. It works on the premise that a better skilled/ owner person drives you to reach the same level.

 Scarcity: This principle based on wanting or having something person can'thave it. It uses Appointment Dynamics where person need to return back in fixed and scheduled time to get their rewards. This makes them think about the task entire day.

 Curiosity: This works on the simple principle of curiosity – what will happen next and anticipation. This is randomness attracts the person to keep on checking it back. 

Loss : We never want something bad or negative to happen to us. This works on the same principle.It could be loss of previous work or opportunity.

 Thus, the games are intricate and complex system surprisingly following the rules and principles. It propels gamers to think like a problem-solver, innovator and critical thinker so that to use the rules and form hypotheses so as to achieve the different levels.

Biological/Physiological Reason

One of the biological reason for constant engagement of the gamers with games are weak but qualified. The challenges provide constant stress to the players, this cause rises of the hormone Cortisol in individual’s system(Linden 2011) The moment the player overcome the challenge, a surge of dopamine- pleasure inducing hormone is released. This also makes the person powerful and superior to others. The player later become addicted to the rush of dopamine and thus want to clear hard and harder challenges( TED).

Engagement Tools

The gamers are presented with the challenges and levels and the rules. Most of the games ( there are various categories of the games ranging from strategizing to exploration) work on reward system. The system is popularly known as the PBL system. It is : Point, Badges, Leadership board.

The Badges are used to encourage participation and reward for reaching specific goals. For example-awarding a welcome badge for joining the community or Platinum badge for the fastest Calculus learner of the week.

Points: Use to inspire engagement, teamwork and active participation in classrooms.

Leaderboards: Points may be used for building leaderboards, this is usually used to boast the standing of the person, there can be micro-leaderboard( inside a small group), macro-leaderboard ( in the classroom) or sectional-leaderboard( in entire batch). It can boost the standing and can also be used as a currency or barter system to barter other benefit.

Campaigns: Again is for engagement, it tracks, monitors and map the student’s activities. It also contains progress bar which indicates the person how many points are needed to achieve the next level.

Thinking like a designer in order to understand systems is a core 21st-century skill.” — Dr. James Paul Gee, Mary Lou Fulton Presidential Professor of Literacy Studies at Arizona State University

Examples of Gamification in Education:

1. Foldit.

Foldit is an online puzzle game. The game is about protein folding and is a part of an experimental research project developed by the University of Washington's Center for Game Science in collaboration with the UW Department of Biochemistry. Scientists need hundreds of structural configuration of the selected proteins. These proteins can eradicate diseases and create biological innovations. The objective of Foldit is to make gamers play the games using the tools and fold the structures of selected proteins. The maximum recorded solutions are than analyzed by researchers, who see the viability of these folded protein in real-life. A 2010 paper in the science journal Nature credited Foldit's 57,000 players with providing useful results that matched or outperformed algorithmically computed solutions.

2. Khan Academy

Khan Academy started with online lessons and later in 2010 shifted to gamification of online learning. The beauty of the academy is its micro lectures (enough to get attention, but not disengage) in the form of videos and practice exercises along with tools for educators. The academy uses lot of gamification elements like Points, and Badges, virtual avatars, knowledge map (which predict your strengths and weakness) among other things. Khan academy also provide gaming experience where you can solve exercises along with somebody in different part of a globe and while you are reaching to do it, you can win or earn points. Currently Khan Academy has more than 15 million subscribed users .

 Gamification in our classroom

Imagine a class having dynamics of games. Where the student is feeling all important and knows that his project/findings or idea can make a difference in somebody’s life.

The author has used the gaming dynamics in various manners in their teaching-learning process and assessment. One of the most ambitious gamification authors are envision and implementing is “Reaching the Pinnacle”. This project integrates all the elements of the games and basically meant to encourage the holistic development of the students. As per the chalked down graduate attributes of different bodies, few qualities are common among them which includes – leadership, team work, technically sound, good interpersonal relation, problem- solver, critical and creative thinker, strategist among other attributes.

The gamification element which was chosen, though have all other underlying principle, was a points and badge system that was added to the students in their MIS(Management Information System ) profile. The context was identified, which was that the students of an engineering college have limited for learning and this element along with progress bar works well. The student can earn points and badges in three areas Scholastic, Co-curricular and Extra-Curricular participation. The weightage was also distributed.

The profile is in sync of the program and focus on 12 competencies s/he related with graduate attributes, that they need to work upon improveon. The MIS profile can be accessed through  a mobile device, making it easy for the student to see and monitor the progress.

Students can earn points in participation in various events and they can later barter the points for certain benefits like attendance in the class, exemption from formative assessment and so on. To give autonomy to the student the leader board was reset every semester to offer a balanced system, encouraging students who are lagging behind to join it nytime. Ownership was also assigned by giving them freedom to customize their learning program and priorities. A student good in extra-curricular can adjust the weightage and still earn the same point. But the profile map which shows the progress bar to the student do have some non-negotiable points which are mandatory for them to earn.

The system in alignment with familiar aspects of the learning process in gamified way. It awards point, badges and leader board positions for:  class attendance, class room participation, team work, excellence in work, completion of assignments, group assignment, and group presentations, participation in cultural and sports events, workshops, seminars and conferences. The gamified e-profiling of the learning system achieved key engagement factors namely: fun (enjoyable experience), socialization  (working in team and mentoring and mentee), individuality ( autonomy), challenge (by the activities and by peer group completion), strategy(clear and focussed outcomes and paths) and feedback (explicit feedback of achievements).

This application of gamification aiming at motivating student overall and having a e-profile as well allows the students to have a deep sense of accomplishment and self-mastery. As they will complete this in their own space and will work as team for their projects and other assignments, it creates bonhomie. The profile incentivized students toparticipate and complete lessons and activities and tackle few more.

Conclusion

The potential of Gamification in education is nebulous right now. The potential is immense and latent. The sheer effect and effect of games are evident. Though gamifying the education can be perturbing to some educators due to its profligate nature, but prudent and judicious usage of gamifying education can turn around the engagement theory of the students.