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What happens when a card game is combined with chemistry? A periodic table of chemical elements is born! That’s exactly what happened in the 19th century when Russian scientist Dmitri Mendeleev, the father of the periodic table, used playing cards to classify the elements of the periodic table and understand their relationship to one another. This was one of the very first known instances of gamification in learning.
Education is one of the key sectors where gamification has gained ground over the years. Let’s find out the meaning of gamification in education, look at a few examples of gamification in the classroom and explore the advantages of gamification in learning.
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What Is Gamification In Education?
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Gamification In Education Examples
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Advantages Of Gamification In Learning
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Impactful Learning
What Is Gamification In Education?
Gamification in education is an educational approach that aims to infuse a touch of fun in learning through the use of game-based elements and experiences. This student-centric teaching method aims to drive learner motivation and engagement by fostering collaboration, encouraging participation in the classroom and creating a more immersive and enjoyable learning environment. Incorporating game-like components while designing the different methods of learning allows teachers to capture and retain the attention of their students and deliver positive shifts in their behavior.
Gamification In Education Examples
To gamify learning, teachers often resort to rewards and incentives in the form of points, badges and leaderboards. Let’s look at a few gamification in education examples to better understand the concept of gamification:
1. Points And Levels
One of the most common examples of gamification in education is using a point-based learning system in the classroom. To gamify learning, teachers assign points for each new chapter, concept or assignment that a student masters or successfully completes. Points earned by students are tracked over a period of time and milestones are set. Once a student reaches a particular milestone, they receive a reward. The class may also try earning enough points together for a field trip at the end of a session.
2. Quizzes
Among the other prominent examples of gamification in education are quizzes, which are a popular form of gamification in online learning. There are numerous quiz platforms available today where students can work on the same task at the same time. Using timed questions to gamify learning prompts students to think faster and keeps them engaged throughout the process. The questions get more challenging as a student progresses through a quiz. Once they reach the end, they’re awarded a score, a skill badge or certificate and personalized feedback. Students may opt to retake the quiz in an attempt to beat their previous score or move up the leaderboard.
3. Personalized Profiles
Another example of gamification in learning is the creation of personalized student profiles. Similar to how certain games allow players to create their own profiles including strengths, weaknesses and character traits, teachers may help students develop their own personalized profiles to track performance over time. Student profiles may also include the foundational skills a student develops over time, their areas of interest and dislikes. Such an approach of gamification in education allows teachers to tailor their efforts to a student’s needs.
Apart from these, other examples of gamification in education include dividing students up in teams or study groups and asking them to take on specific parts of a project, adopting games like bingo and scrabble in a classroom setting and creating innovative competitions and contests for non-academic objectives. Each of these approaches can also be used for gamification in online learning.
Advantages Of Gamification In Learning
Now that we know gamification meaning in education and have gone through a few salient examples of gamification in the classroom, let’s look at the top three advantages of gamification in learning:
1. Fosters Active Learning
Gamifying education helps students transform into active learners in the classroom. They’re motivated to think critically, proactively solve problems and participate in classroom discussions instead of simply relying on rote learning. (Fluticasone)
2. Promotes Interactivity
To gamify learning is to make learning simultaneously informative and interactive. Students learn to think on their feet and interact with their teachers and peers while responding to the various challenges of gamified education.
3. Develops Resilience
Gamification in the classroom helps students overcome their fear of failure and makes them resilient in the face of setbacks. Students learn to bounce back from a failed attempt to keep trying just as they keep replaying a failed level of a game in an attempt to win.
Gamifying education can not only foster healthy competition among students, pushing them to deliver their best, but also allows students to effectively measure their progress over time. However, it’s important to prioritize intrinsic motivation while utilizing gamification in learning so that students start enjoying the learning process itself instead of only looking forward to the external rewards and incentives.
Impactful Learning
The learner-centered approach of gamification in education has been proven to increase both productivity and performance levels of students. A recent study showed students taught through challenge-based gamification were able to raise their overall performance by 89.4% compared to students taught only through lectures. When teachers incorporate gamification in teaching, they benefit from increased learner engagement and retention.
Harappa’s Inspiring Faculty Program is designed to help experienced faculty keep pace with changing classroom demands. They learn to listen actively, encourage healthy group discussions to create an engaging learning environment and build trust to become a coach, mentor and confidant for students. Outcome-oriented pedagogical frameworks such as Bloom’s Taxonomy, the Johari Window and Aristotle’s Appeals deliver transformative behavior shifts. As faculty pick up Thrive Skills such as Learning Agility, Cognitive Ability and Presentation Flair, they’re able to select and implement innovative teaching methods to ignite student learning. Sign up your organization today for Harappa’s Inspiring Faculty Program and take your faculty on an impactful learning journey.
