From Quizzes to Quests: How to Level Up Learning in the Classroom!

As a way to enhance learning, Gamification in education supplies application of game design elements to the classroom with game aspects like points, levels, challenges, and more to increase student engagement in a variety of ways. Some examples of these game-like concepts can be seen in this blog post. Although in education it seems more common practice now to shorten and simplify learning in order to better reach students, video games use exactly the opposite technique and achieve better engagement with children, among many other benefits.

How Does Gamification Enhance Learning?

One of the most crucial elements of gamification that enhances the learning experience is the productive struggle it triggers and the continuing progress it entails. As humans, our brains do not like to see unfinished tasks, and we are often sparked into action by seeing challenges and similar. As such, gamification enhances the learning experience by providing continuing and progressively more challenging opportunities to show growth.

Gamification also provides visible progress students can see throughout the process. Players can easily discover at what stage they are in games, which gives them not only the sense of wanting to grow, as discussed, but also validates all of their hard work and effort as when signs of progress are seen, players feel stronger and smarter. This is such an important aspect that should be incorporated more in classrooms, because it is only by seeing where they started and where they are now do they build the confidence to continue, despite maybe initially failing at some levels or tasks. This concept is expanded on in this riveting blog post!

Lastly and probably the most enticing aspect of gamification is the entertainment quality. Gamification is vastly fun and engaging for students, it adds an element of enjoyment that is lacking in the traditional worksheet and paper/pencil assignments. It enhances the learning process simply because of its pleasure and leisure, although students are still learning at the same time. If students are actually engaged with what they are doing and learning, they will never have to be forced to learn but crave it instead, which through gamification can happen very easily. This blog post details many different gamification applications that can entice learning for students!

TCE Thresholds

1. Curriculum is more than standards, textbooks, or courses of study
   1. A traditional curriculum does not enhance learning or engage students the way gamification can. Gamification, along with other engaging strategies, can teach students so much more and in a much more entertaining way than a textbook adhering to impersonal, tedious standards. To create a curriculum that students are captivated by and invested in, there must be more beyond worksheets and simple assignments designed to cover surface level knowledge, and gamification provides one avenue in which curriculum can be redesigned to still cover all standards necessary, but in a format that is entertaining and engaging for the classroom.
2. Teaching is/as intellectual engagement
   1. Gamification is a more modern strategy used in classrooms, and like all new techniques and strategies, teachers should always be willing to keep up and learn along with the students. It is not enough to just know the content, but teachers must always be trying to learn new ways to deliver instruction in a meaningful and intentional way. As such, teaching is a profession in which we must always be advancing and trying new things to engage our students.

Personal Experience

Although I haven’t been in a classroom this year to try out any new gamification programs I’ve recently learned about, I did use the game “Blooket” quite a bit while I was teaching 5th grade last year. Blooket has a variety of different game modes that are used alongside with quiz questions that can be tailored for a variety of subjects and topics. I have tried them with science vocabulary terms, problem solving for mathematical topics, and science application questions. Students were extremely engaged and consistently asked to do Blooket’s in class, and I noticed that as long as there were a variety of questions that were more application-based rather than definitions they could quickly memorize to just click rapidly and get more points, they were. a great review tool and acted as a great formative assessment since it breaks down the percentages of questions answered correctly for individual players.
A new tool I’d love to try out when I go back to the classroom and want to integrate into my CBCI unit plan on racial identity and discrimination is Graffiti Pages. Especially considering that I am including graphic novels and picture books in the unit, I think students can draw a lot of inspiration from the images they will be seeing to include in their graffiti page and create a more engaging kind of sketchnotes that will show understanding while also helping to build more comprehension. For less artistic students, the idea of having them include bolder words or quotes that encapsulate the main ideas are also helpful. I’d love to then display all of them in a gallery walk, either virtually or physically, and have students give out points not only for artistic skill but for the ability to capture what they’ve learned, which could add a competitive edge to this gaming concept. I wonder if it would be more beneficial to have students work in pairs or groups to do this, and possibly create larger murals rather than just a page, or have them complete it individually.

Switch from paper & pencil assignments to video games in the classroom for harder working and more engaged students! Interested in learning more? Check out my blog post on Gamification in Education! #tce623 #exemplaryteacher @edutopia @educationweek https://t.co/SmuPLUmC9Y

— MissSossai (@MissSossai) November 5, 2024

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