Gamification to Enhance the Learning Experience and Increase Creativity
Gamification has been shown to be used throughout the adult world and careers for ages, but has come to education more slowly. It is believed that this is so because many people do not know or see the value of gamification but rather see it as a pastime, a hobby, not an effective learning tool! Classrooms have looked a certain way for decades, and gamification does not create our traditional picture of a classroom. However, the belief that there is no value in gamification could not be further from the truth. Gamification and gaming can enhance student learning and foster student creativity helping to create fully engaged students who learn and retain information more effectively.
- Gamification can enhance the learning experience: Examples are often given of the traditional classroom teacher beginning a new unit saying, “today we are going to study imperialism. Please get out your notebooks and read the text provided.” I can see my students slumping in their seats, putting their heads down, some even making contact as they slip their headphones back over their ears, and I get it! I recently taught a lesson with interactive notes, but notes nonetheless, and 15 minutes in I had already lost pretty much my entire class. Traditional methods of schooling are just, in reality, growing less and less effective by the minute. Forget that students aren’t interested, they just aren’t going to learn this way anymore, it is anything but applicable or realistic for them. This is where gamification comes into the learning experience. As Michael Matera and John Meehan point out in their book, Fully Engaged: Playful Pedagogy for Real Results, “gamification is about fostering autonomy, rewarding player curiosity, and responding to the meaningful choices that individuals make…it’s about creating a learning experience that’s completely powered by intrinsic motivation.” (pg. 23) Is this not everything we want for our students and the future generations? Independence and a love for learning. Gamification can enhance the learning experience because it not only is relatable for students who spent a huge amount of their time gaming (even if it’s just playing Candy Crush on their phones) but it also allows for an autonomous experience with positive reinforcement for curiosity, that allows for creativity and responds to student voice and choice all at once. Even just one of these factors makes student engagement and learning improve, let alone all at the same time! Take, for example, a station activity. I use stations often in my classroom and students generally complete better work and do not complain on station days. They allow students to work in groups, discover information for themselves, and allow me to give more individualized attention to each student. That being said, when we’re on our fourth station activity of the quarter, they begin to lose their draw that they once had. This is where, as suggested by Matera and Meehan, “Curriculum Quests” can change things. While a curriculum quest is still a stations activity, it’s like a stations activity on steroids where each station has a different task attached to it; using dice to build stories about a topic, transferring information into drawings, having free-flowing conversations with peers and the teacher, even designing a structure related to the learning out of legos or coming up with their own TikTok dance! Now students not only experience the autonomy to choose their stations freely, they are encouraged to try new things, think in new ways, and get creative, and even beyond this, there is something in this for everyone! Not interested in TikTok, write a story, not interested in being an author but love to draw? Visit the sketchnote station! Students are still working in groups, this still allows for student autonomy, and still allows for my individual attention to be given to students, but there is also so much more.
- This leads well into the idea that gamification fosters creativity: Almost every station listed previously ensures that students think creatively. Drawing notes, building structures, making up dances, and relate it all back to class content? We are a far way from, “today we are going to study imperialism. Please get out your notebooks and read the text provided.” If you want to dive deeper into fostering creativity and enhancing learning experiences.
Aligning with TCE Thresholds
- Threshold 1: Both Teachers and Students have Empowerment and Agency: As mentioned previously, in gamified activities like curriculum quest, student agency is honored as they are not only allowed to choose their station and who they work with, but their creativity is also honored through this work as the constraints are minimal. You must use the legos provided to build a structure that relates to our topic, but what structure, what aspect of the topic, how literal? All of this is up to the student. This is empowering the student’s agency and creativity, but also still ensures the teacher’s empowerment and agency is not lost. Teachers may set the activity options, they may set the boundaries with the activities, time constraints, etc. This helps ensure creativity and engagement (not to mention that boundaries, or “constraints,” as Gabe Zichermann calls them, encourage creativity) is consistently present in the classroom, but also ensures that this creativity and engagement is still helping students learn the content. Beyond this, offering students choice between not just themselves and the teacher, but themselves and their peers displays a clear sense of equity. Though there are constraints, their freedom to find something that works for them, even if it is not the same as what the teacher would have recommended, or what works for their peers, builds a sense of equity in the classroom. Further, the skills of creativity, empowerment, and autonomy taught through gamification can be fostered and used as students continue their learning and lives. It is pertinent, now perhaps more than ever, to work for social justice, however, in this same way, we will need to get creative in how this is done. Gamification takes us beyond the classroom and will follow us throughout our lives if we really let it run its course and will help our students make real change in the real world because they were given these opportunities within school.
- This idea of students using their learning in the real world leads nicely into Threshold 2: Curriculum is more than standards, textbooks, or courses of study: Now, obviously, we have standards we must teach, but we all know our teaching goes beyond that, we want to teach students to be lifelong learners, good people, creative thinkers, deep thinkers, so much more than just the causes of World War I. Gamification can help us get there. Gamification ensures that students work together, these skills of collaboration and communication will be valuable for the rest of their lives, it is vitally important for students to learn how to work together and be “good people” to those they’re working with, employers today expect this ability, and therefore, we ought to teach it. Beyond this, if gamification truly does keep students fully engaged as Matera and Meehan’s book sets out to prove, then we can also use it to teach students that learning is fun, moving them towards lifelong learning. Furthermore, as Zichermann points out, students find themselves intrinsically motivated, desiring more success, and willing to keep trying (because failing is easy) which pushes them into a creative and ever growing mindset that also encourages lifelong learning. This creativity, desire to keep learning, and general ability to be kind while working collaboratively reinforce the values of equity and social justice as well. Firstly, the idea of “failing easily,” helps us create equity in our classrooms. When the stakes of failure are “press a button to try again” rather than public embarrassment or failure of a class, students develop grit and perseverance, and are placed on a more equal playing field! Perhaps one student needs to try an activity once to get it, while their neighbor needs five tries. While each student’s needs are different, they are reaching the same mastery by their needs being met. Secondly, our push to create lifelong learners and creative thinkers, in combination with good people who can work collaboratively, we can begin to see real world application occur with our students. Another TCE threshold, that teaching honors student’s full humanity, reminds us that students come to the classroom with lives already and many who feel comfortable with teachers and peers want to discuss these things. Gamified classrooms lend themselves to using these skills to solve these real world problems and act to build socially just structures, situations, and environments inside of, and beyond schools. Gamification often asks students to imagine themselves in different situations (Julius Caesar’s PR agent, Malcolm X’s speech writer, you get the idea) where would we ever find these activities in our textbooks, how else would our students be exposed to different career paths? School is so much more than content, and gamification will get us there.
Gamification in Action: Hexagonal Thinking
In my Modern World History classroom with freshmen students I applied the gamification strategy of Hexagonal Thinking as opposed to a weekly “learning check” quiz. Students are studying imperialism through the Scramble for Africa and the Berlin Conference. We spend the week taking introductory notes, discussing relative political cartoons, reading about these events, examining and creating maps of areas imperialized, and developing our own political cartoons about these concepts and events, so by Friday, it would have been time for a quiz, but we tried using this gamified review strategy instead.
In Hexagonal Thinking student groups are given an envelope of (in our case 15) hexagons with words, phrases, names, etc. on them all relating to your area of study or question posed for the activity. Student groups are then given a set amount of time to create a path of hexagons with justifiable connections. At the end of the activity student groups each get about 1 minute to explain their paths to their classmates who vote for the best one.
Initially I thought this game would be an interesting way to use half a class period, show me what my students know, and keep them engaged, instead of making them sit silently for 20 minutes while taking a quiz. While all of this is true, this game proved to be far more than I expected.
On Friday, after engaging in a conversation with my students to quickly review what they know and give them a chance to ask any questions they had, I organized them into groups of three or four and gave each group an envelope. I read through instructions with students and gave time for any additional questions before it was off to the races. Some class periods were reluctant to get started and talk to each other (especially first period with students wandering 10, 15, 20 minutes late and having to jump into the activity as well), others jumped right in, others were completely chaotic (last period of the day on a Friday, I probably should have seen that one coming). What was most surprising about this activity though was the struggle that so many of my classes had to understand it. While students in my school are often surprised when there is no one correct way to do something, and very confused when points are not attributed to what they are doing (they love to get a grade) they really struggled to make a path. Some students got this right away and had paths springing out in all directions, others built honeycombs where everything impacted everything, again, there was no one correct way to do this, but when I asked for justification, especially from my honeycomb groups, students simply could not finish the sentence, “I connected these two because…” even when their connections were logical and chronologically accurate. I could see a plethora of ways their concepts were connected and was excited to hear them break down their thinking but nearly every single time they fell flat.
While disappointed in my student’s stills and knowledge of the content, this game did effectively give me a deeper understanding of where my students stand within this unit thus far, kept students engaged for the full amount of time we spent doing this (approximately 20 minutes), and got even my hardest classes working collaboratively, effectively, and with excitement. So the implementation of this game was a success, I just noticed that my students have gaps in their learning, which honestly, is also beneficial.
I do plan on using this game again, however, when I do I think I will either give my students a more constrained topic than “imperialism,” after all, Zichermann (and admittedly, my mother) says constraints encourage creativity. Or, I will give them less than 15 hexagons to connect. I am suspicious that we just started with too much of a challenge, not only were students trying to get a handle on the game, but they were also trying to recall vocabulary, concepts, events, people, work with others, and do it all under a ticking clock. I believe and hope that if I lower the stakes, I will see greater success among my students.
Some Student Work Examples:
I was excited to see you use the hexagonal thinking, this is an activity I want to use at some point as well. I agree with your changes for next time, less hexagons and a tighter topic might bear more fruit. I think it may also be helpful if there was a way for students to write down there connections like on a large easel paper that may have forced their hand more instead of saying “idk”. I commend your use nonetheless!
I first have to commend you, because having everybody engaged for 20 MINUTES, is amazing! I’m happy that your students were perked up for this game, and were able to give you an idea of where they are at. Even if they aren’t where you want them to be, identifying the gaps is half the battle! Maybe as the year goes on, and the students are more comfortable with the game, you can use this as a review prior to a test, or even have student create their own hexagons with what they found to be most important.
Thank you! I don’t know how I did it, I guess gamification works! Even my non-English speaking students were picking it up well! You’re right though, it is a good reminder that not knowing the gaps is a worse place to be than this! I love your idea of having students build their own hexagons though! Maybe each group could build a set and trade with another? It would be a great way to get them even more involved in their learning
This sounds like such a fun way to review material, especially compared to a quiz! It’s great to hear that even your toughest classes were engaged. I’m curious, did the students seem to prefer this activity over a traditional quiz? Did any of them ask to do it again?
They absolutely preferred it to a quiz. I had been battling quiz complaints all week while this was looming and though some seemed disappointed to lose a potential boost to their grade there were zero complaints about the game. I plan to debrief on Monday about the hexagons and see if they would like to try them again, though I’m definitely interested. There seems to be an infinite amount of ways to implement these for all sorts of lengths of time too. If you looked at the hexagonal thinking link in my post I already have a ton of ideas to switch it up. So I guess to answer your question I do not know if my students will want to play again, but I hope they do.