Introduction to Gamification in education

This article will be showcasing three of the ideas I use when I teach. In future other articles will cover more but I felt I should start with just a few. Being a games design tutor means I have a passion for both teaching and games. I love marrying these in the classroom taking my ideas for games design and converting them into interesting tasks for lessons that encourage learning and are fun all at the same time.  

When we play games, we learn to manage armies, build cities, develop relationships and so much more in a reduced window of time. So why is it after six continuous hours of game play a student will know more about the history, the tactics and design of fictional world than if you were to apply the same six hours in the classroom? The fact of the matter is, it’s fun. Learning through play has been proven as a legitimate way to help retention. 

I strongly believe these gamified learning approaches can be applied in any vocation and I implore you to try them in your own classes where you can and share the results, you’ll enjoy them as much as the students themselves. 

Dungeons and dragon's student character sheets: 

I find this is a great way to get students thinking about themselves as a character. So how is it structured? 

Create a sheet for students that have the following sections. Name, Backstory, Strengths, Weaknesses, ambitions and skills. There should also be a space for them to put their portrait as this will factor into a drawing task which is always great to see how students perceive themselves and helps bring some creativity into the class. Name is self-explanatory so I will start with Backstory. 

Backstory: For this section students should write a bit about themselves; it doesn’t have to be much but when you read these through later it helps get a feel for who your students are and it’s a great way for students to share a bit about what they might be going through at the moment.  

Strengths and weaknesses: I find this works well as it starts the critical thinking process, this can be subject specific, and it can be as basic or as advanced as you like. For example, in math with younger students you may get them to put timetables they know as a strength 5, 10, 2 and 3 and then identify areas they struggle with such as division or subtraction. Again, this is a great initial assessment for students, and you may find it helps them to better set their own targets for learning. 

Ambitions: I like throwing this in, I think knowing what student's life goals helps us as teachers know that student better and add value to their overall learning experience. The scope of their goal will depend on their level. My Level 3 students are often thinking beyond college/university and are thinking about their next steps, whereas younger students might think in the shorter term for their ambition. This will not always be the case as my experience lies in 16 + and from my experience the ambition does vary widely at this level. 

Skills: This one works with software driven courses; I like to know what skills my students have before they start so having them write these down gives me a good look at who may have done some work in Unity or Photoshop. This could also be applied in a wide variety of vocations; some you may need to list skills to get a good feel for what students know. If we refer to science, we might list skills as Cell’s, Space, human anatomy etc. (This is why I encourage you to look at your own vocations, I am not a scientist, and these may not be what you teach at all). 

Portrait: Get them to draw their character, their character in this scenario is them. It doesn’t have to be a self-portrait I have had students draw themselves as everything from their favorite Pokémon, to elves and orcs. It’s a great way to add a bit more fun into the task and there is no reason creativity shouldn’t be married into every subject you teach. 

This task is so valuable as it really gives a great initial insight to learners and how they view themselves and for differentiation in sessions I find this task invaluable. 

Listen and draw:  

This task is what the title implies, students listen to a passage, this might be one that is written by the tutor (I really enjoy writing these) or alternately passages taken from books for example the lord of the rings or Jurassic park.  

The idea: For this, tutors read the passage to the students. The students are given an amount of time to draw what they visualize in their heads as they listen. This is a great way to help with retention of events in the book and I find students listen, and I mean really listen to what is being spoken. This learning resource can be adapted to work for a multitude of subjects. Most of my examples include magical creatures and strange alien worlds however I don’t see why it couldn’t work for teaching history and English in schools.  

If you want to challenge students you could get them to write their own short passages and each week a different passage is read out, this is a great way to keep fun and creativity in those dry sessions where actually it would be really interesting to incorporate something to keep the students engaged. 

Send them on a quest: 

When I teach students on the Level 2 course (GCSE equivalent), I like to make the session an event. Sending students on a quest is a great way to help your class understand that they are progressing and developing and are not in fact doing one static task after another and failing to see how they tie in together. I used this to great effect to teach students about testing and bugs.  

The quest was called bug hunt and it involved recreating pages of a researcher's books. The researcher's books had been destroyed by computer bugs and the testing methods to find them and defeat the bugs were lost with it.  

For this I gave the students scenarios where bugs may have been affected and gave them research opportunities throughout the session. Students ended up gaining experience points and the same thing that gets many of them to play games also encouraged them to participate in this session. Let me be clear with this approach, it is not enough to just “theme” a session, this is not effective, and the students will see through it. It’s like telling a student a crossword is fun and making it game themed, this does not engage learners on a higher level if it’s not an actual game (If you are a big crossword fan, I am sorry, they really don’t float my boat, they may work for you, these are just my own observations). 

What did the students do? 

The primary focus was learning about bugs they would come across within a game and methods we can use to test and find these. I wanted the students to research in teams, problem solve and create using a software they had been learning (adobe Photoshop). By the end of the session students could tell me what each type of bug they might come across, I made these enemies in my quest, so students related to this, learned their weaknesses; these being how to fix them and their strengths, this related to the damage these could cause. 

The students created their own artwork for each of these bugs and made enemy profile sheets in Photoshop. To this day I can talk to these students who no longer teach anymore, and this lesson really resonates with them, try sending students on quests within your own session. 

To conclude: 

I thank you for taking the time to read my first ever article, if you do try any of these out in your sessions then please contact me and let me know how they went. Feedback from a variety of practitioners can only make these resources more effective. I will be doing more articles talking about various other gamified teaching approaches. In the meantime, let's start #GamifyingEducation and working on making education fun and interesting. Keep working hard and let's keep making a positive change in our young people.