Gamification in the Classroom

Gamification enhances the learning experience and fosters creativity/innovation

Engagement and motivation: Games inherently capture students’ interest and keep them engaged. The challenge and reward system in games can motivate students to actively participate in learning activities. When this is paired with learning, students are more likely to be successful and learn for mastery of the subject. The built-in incentives in games, such as points, levels, or badges, also enhance their engagement. These incentives provide immediate feedback and a sense of accomplishment.

Foster creativity/innovation: Gaming opportunities allow students to expand upon their skills such as creativity, innovation, technological, perseverance, teamwork, collaboration, and many more. Games with open-world elements like Minecraft, provides students with an opportunity to express their creativity. This not only enhances their imagination but also allows them to learn about compromise and teamwork. Overcoming challenges within games requires perseverance. Multiplayer games promote teamwork and collaboration as students work together to achieve common goals. This mirrors real-world scenarios where collaboration is often essential. Sharpening these social skills are crucial in their development for their schooling and adulthood years. 

TCE Threshold Concepts

• Curriculum is more than standards, textbooks, or courses of study
  • Gamification introduces a new approach which actively engages students in a distinct way from traditional textbooks. This impacts their lives because through engaging games, students are able to completely master 100% of their subjects and equip them with imperative skills for their development. These skills can  be challenging to develop or replicate without gaming. Even if technological, creative, or other skills aren’t included in our standard curriculum, it’s crucial to offer our students the best opportunity for lifelong learning and success. This plays out in games, because the skills and engagement are stronger in games than they are in textbooks. We are also communicating the importance of the development of their skills.
• Both teachers and students have empowerment/agency
  • Students have expressed both implicitly and explicitly that they prefer learning through games. Students already know which games capture their interest and are engaging for them. By strategically integrating these preferred gaming experiences with learning objectives, we are able to foster a higher level of student engagement and mastery. This plays out in games, because students can feel as though we are listening to their needs and can be assured that we are providing them with the best tools to be successful.

My Gamification Experience

Impression: I chose to play Baamboozle as a warm up for literacy comprehension. My students loved playing the game, and they were engaged throughout the activity. Baamboozle has multiple settings, so I decided to try the bowling setting for the first time. I liked using this because rather than a fixed point system, they were randomized. This was more exciting for them because of the unpredictability. Baamboozle was effective in preparing them to learn and was a quick way to practice their skills.

Successes:Both of my students were engaged during this warm up and it helped them establish interest in our lesson as well. I like how user-friendly Baamboozle is and the variety of customizable options. My students really liked the swap and steal points (magnet) features, but I was able to turn off options that weren’t as fair. I also like how the points are visible at all times and are instantly added and subtracted as each question is answered. The questions on our deck were easily decodable, so they could read it themselves. 

Challenges: I found that most of the game decks are catered towards math and older students, so it was difficult to find one for our needs. Specifically to my deck, there were a few highlighted words which led to confusion. They thought the highlighted words may be the answer since we typically highlight the answers on our reading comprehension worksheets.  This provided a teachable moment about text features, but was still confusing and momentarily veered us off course. 

Next time: I would like to make my own deck so that it is customizable to their interests. I also would like to try this with stories that we have already read and do this as a post assignment rather than a warm up. For example, if we read Listen Buddy, I could create my own comprehension questions and add pictures from the book. This could also be achieved by incorporating the pre-made passage questions from our routines. I would also like to provide them with a few decks they can do in their free time.