Gamification of Learning
Index
Foundations
When to Gamify?
Why Gamify?
Agency
Gamification Challenges
Use Cases
Core Mechanics
Resources
Who Am I?
1. Foundations
Experience Building
Everything we design, implement, and present intends to create an experience for other people. Experience is the result of the combination of materials, imagination, narration, technology, and/or aesthetics. It is the result of human interaction with the world around us. This is the reason why learning designers need to have a comprehensive perspective of learners' actions, in order for them to tailor one that can offer agency.
Gamification can be applied to enhance the learning procedure of learners in various age levels. Not specifically a certain generation. It's built on structuring an experience.
Experiences are memorable in the sense that they are recalled as standing out from events, activities and feelings that came before and came after. Learning experiences though are heightened and meaningful experiences in which each phase flows into the next seamlessly from one part of the phase to the other allowing cognition to occur.
1. Foundations
Experience Building
According to Philosopher John Dewey from his book "Art as Experince":
There are key aspects to experience building that we can extract a meaning of to craft our own learning experience:
- Memorable: distinguishable standing out from what went before & after.
- Flow: events, phases, parts flow seamlessly to a holistic whole.
- Unity (bound with emotion): unity in parts is constructed through the emotions experienced.
- Consummation: a culmination of the events leads to a consummation
1. Foundations
In the words of professor David Perkin from Harvard School of Continuing Education, an effective learning experience demands SIX core pillars for it to come to life:
Experiencing Learning
1. Learners must be deeply engaged with the subject matter
2. Learners must undertake intellectual challenges
3. Learners should have a room to take learning risks
For that reason, creating experiences that captivate learners’ interests and involve them in the discovery of something new can bring you closer to a new and interesting pedagogical tool.
4. Learners must face a margin of failure
5. Learners must have the ability to fail & bounce back
As learning designers, we need to harvest this potential and use it to create experiences that are both fun and constructive for the human mind.
6. Learners’ sense of curiosity must be increased
1. Foundations
Experiencing Gamification
Thats why gamification is identified as the application of game mechanics & elements in a non-game context to promote desired behaviors and drive specific learning outcomes.
Gamification mainly harnesses the principles and mechanics often found in gaming experiences(such as narratives, problem solving puzzles, points) to deliver learning which ultimately leads to greater engagement and motivation.
Which is mainly used to drive motivation & engagement of a certain system. Impacting the entirety of its components.
In short, it offers an approach directed outwards towards learners into an interactive dialogue between learner and educator or content friendlier environment exploring individual skills simultaneously connected with game characteristics. A system that can drive further involvment with learning.
2. Foundations
Yet, Gamification
Doesn't typically look like a game!
Its about utilizing game elements to drive motivation.
Like how in certain social media platforms, a progress bar is offered signaling the users to finish filling out their data.
Or in an elearning course, providing pop ups that hint the learners towards different interactions or even to conitnuing on a narrative to an overarching story the learning course is discussing.
Think about it as a structuring layer that increases the likehood of the learners to be more immersed into the experience you are offering. It's a layer that is built on a solid learning design plan.
2. Foundations
Gamification: Myth vs Reality
2. When to Gamify?
Effective gamification happens:
When the expectations of learning system
When the learning systems offers
When the quality of the learning system is
are managed & possible to achieve. Gamification systems are built around expectancy and motivation. You need to offer what is of value to the learner at every milestone.
correlated affordance between the game elements provided such progress bars, points, challenges, etc. and the desired learning outcomes.
reliable, relevant to the learner and is directed towards concrete learning objectives. The knowledge presented must be accurate & timely.
3. Why Gamify?
It shouldn't be your first decision to gamify
Unless you want to increase a social element
Unless you want to cater agency
Unless you want to envoke further engagement
Allowing more room for learners to get together and discuss achievements, get feedback from other learners, and share insights on how to apply effectively.
Learner agency stems around the ability to make meaningful decisions. Allowing provide both the sense and the outcome for how a decision might affect the outcome of the learning.
making it easier for learners to get into complex frameworks & actions helping them retain what they are learning.
4. Agency
Some may think that learner agency is just about interactivity. But that would be cutting it too short.
This means that learners should be given the ability to make decisions in the system. But these decisions shouldn’t be trivial – at least from the learner's perceptive. Meaningful decisions towards learning objectives. Applications of narratives that have game-like elements like branching stories (for example) provide agency in order to determine the outcome of the story.
Learner agency is about giving players the interactivity to affect and change the system within designed borders to influence and change what is happening to learn through implementing. It provides them control (or at least of sense of it) of what will happen next.
Check it out
4. Agency
Choice
Meaningful choices within the game is what makes up much of the learner experience with autonomy.
Experiencing autonomy means the intrinsic notion of being in-charge of one’s behaviour. As long as we are providing meaningful, flexible choices.
To continuously balance learners' curiosity, skills and goals against a finite pool of resources.
This way, learners can feel their behaviour as based on their own intentions and easily accept the consequences (or truly celebrate the rewards)
5. Gamification Challenges
Design Challenges
Severity of Elements
A game can easily confuse a learner as well. Introducing all possible components, such as rules, interfaces, points, rewards, etc at one go can reduce the learner’s attention from the main focus.
Customization
Affordance & Relevance
There is no one-size-fits-all design for a learning experience, and it needs to be customized to suit the learning needs of all the learners.
A good measure here is to see if the gamified content is achieving the learning goals. It may need to be modified as the learner demographic changes or as, for example, an employee training module is revised.
5. Gamification Challenges
Gamification and effective learning, where do things go wrong?
Gamification is simply another discpline or tool
Gamification is a tool, but calling it that tends to oversimplify the concept. Yes, it’s a tool designed for a purpose, but it’s important to remember that both the tool and purpose are extremely complex. Not only does misusing gamification in a learning experience result in wasted resources, but learners will have no patience with a system once they discover it has no real purpose or it was created haphazardly.
If you don’t have a design or technical skillset, but you know a mini-game is the one thing that will elevate your course to the next level, then it’s time to spend some time with a learning game designer. Explain the learning objectives, discuss possible execution options, and, most importantly, listen to what the designer says. The extra work you put in to this process always comes through in the final product, which will translate into a better result for your learners.
6. Use Cases
Best Practice Applications
Learner Standpoint
easy to use
Designer Standpoint
Complex Design
Designer Standpoint
Simple Design
Complex to use
Learner Standpoint
7. Core Mechanics
Mechanics that any effective learning experience demands
Progression System
Victory Condition
Strategy
Loss Aversion
Emebedded Assessments
Curiosity
Social Status
Investment
7. Resources
Bookshelf
Who Am I?
Moe Ash
Learning Architect & Founder of The Catalyst
Butter's Learning Labs Prezi Presentation
Gamification Of Learning
catalyst.program.info@gmail.com
Created on February 12, 2024
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Transcript
Gamification of Learning
Index
Foundations
When to Gamify?
Why Gamify?
Agency
Gamification Challenges
Use Cases
Core Mechanics
Resources
Who Am I?
1. Foundations
Experience Building
Everything we design, implement, and present intends to create an experience for other people. Experience is the result of the combination of materials, imagination, narration, technology, and/or aesthetics. It is the result of human interaction with the world around us. This is the reason why learning designers need to have a comprehensive perspective of learners' actions, in order for them to tailor one that can offer agency.
Gamification can be applied to enhance the learning procedure of learners in various age levels. Not specifically a certain generation. It's built on structuring an experience.
Experiences are memorable in the sense that they are recalled as standing out from events, activities and feelings that came before and came after. Learning experiences though are heightened and meaningful experiences in which each phase flows into the next seamlessly from one part of the phase to the other allowing cognition to occur.
1. Foundations
Experience Building
According to Philosopher John Dewey from his book "Art as Experince":
There are key aspects to experience building that we can extract a meaning of to craft our own learning experience:
1. Foundations
In the words of professor David Perkin from Harvard School of Continuing Education, an effective learning experience demands SIX core pillars for it to come to life:
Experiencing Learning
1. Learners must be deeply engaged with the subject matter
2. Learners must undertake intellectual challenges
3. Learners should have a room to take learning risks
For that reason, creating experiences that captivate learners’ interests and involve them in the discovery of something new can bring you closer to a new and interesting pedagogical tool.
4. Learners must face a margin of failure
5. Learners must have the ability to fail & bounce back
As learning designers, we need to harvest this potential and use it to create experiences that are both fun and constructive for the human mind.
6. Learners’ sense of curiosity must be increased
1. Foundations
Experiencing Gamification
Thats why gamification is identified as the application of game mechanics & elements in a non-game context to promote desired behaviors and drive specific learning outcomes.
Gamification mainly harnesses the principles and mechanics often found in gaming experiences(such as narratives, problem solving puzzles, points) to deliver learning which ultimately leads to greater engagement and motivation.
Which is mainly used to drive motivation & engagement of a certain system. Impacting the entirety of its components.
In short, it offers an approach directed outwards towards learners into an interactive dialogue between learner and educator or content friendlier environment exploring individual skills simultaneously connected with game characteristics. A system that can drive further involvment with learning.
2. Foundations
Yet, Gamification
Doesn't typically look like a game!
Its about utilizing game elements to drive motivation.
Like how in certain social media platforms, a progress bar is offered signaling the users to finish filling out their data.
Or in an elearning course, providing pop ups that hint the learners towards different interactions or even to conitnuing on a narrative to an overarching story the learning course is discussing.
Think about it as a structuring layer that increases the likehood of the learners to be more immersed into the experience you are offering. It's a layer that is built on a solid learning design plan.
2. Foundations
Gamification: Myth vs Reality
2. When to Gamify?
Effective gamification happens:
When the expectations of learning system
When the learning systems offers
When the quality of the learning system is
are managed & possible to achieve. Gamification systems are built around expectancy and motivation. You need to offer what is of value to the learner at every milestone.
correlated affordance between the game elements provided such progress bars, points, challenges, etc. and the desired learning outcomes.
reliable, relevant to the learner and is directed towards concrete learning objectives. The knowledge presented must be accurate & timely.
3. Why Gamify?
It shouldn't be your first decision to gamify
Unless you want to increase a social element
Unless you want to cater agency
Unless you want to envoke further engagement
Allowing more room for learners to get together and discuss achievements, get feedback from other learners, and share insights on how to apply effectively.
Learner agency stems around the ability to make meaningful decisions. Allowing provide both the sense and the outcome for how a decision might affect the outcome of the learning.
making it easier for learners to get into complex frameworks & actions helping them retain what they are learning.
4. Agency
Some may think that learner agency is just about interactivity. But that would be cutting it too short.
This means that learners should be given the ability to make decisions in the system. But these decisions shouldn’t be trivial – at least from the learner's perceptive. Meaningful decisions towards learning objectives. Applications of narratives that have game-like elements like branching stories (for example) provide agency in order to determine the outcome of the story.
Learner agency is about giving players the interactivity to affect and change the system within designed borders to influence and change what is happening to learn through implementing. It provides them control (or at least of sense of it) of what will happen next.
Check it out
4. Agency
Choice
Meaningful choices within the game is what makes up much of the learner experience with autonomy.
Experiencing autonomy means the intrinsic notion of being in-charge of one’s behaviour. As long as we are providing meaningful, flexible choices.
To continuously balance learners' curiosity, skills and goals against a finite pool of resources.
This way, learners can feel their behaviour as based on their own intentions and easily accept the consequences (or truly celebrate the rewards)
5. Gamification Challenges
Design Challenges
Severity of Elements
A game can easily confuse a learner as well. Introducing all possible components, such as rules, interfaces, points, rewards, etc at one go can reduce the learner’s attention from the main focus.
Customization
Affordance & Relevance
There is no one-size-fits-all design for a learning experience, and it needs to be customized to suit the learning needs of all the learners.
A good measure here is to see if the gamified content is achieving the learning goals. It may need to be modified as the learner demographic changes or as, for example, an employee training module is revised.
5. Gamification Challenges
Gamification and effective learning, where do things go wrong?
Gamification is simply another discpline or tool
Gamification is a tool, but calling it that tends to oversimplify the concept. Yes, it’s a tool designed for a purpose, but it’s important to remember that both the tool and purpose are extremely complex. Not only does misusing gamification in a learning experience result in wasted resources, but learners will have no patience with a system once they discover it has no real purpose or it was created haphazardly.
If you don’t have a design or technical skillset, but you know a mini-game is the one thing that will elevate your course to the next level, then it’s time to spend some time with a learning game designer. Explain the learning objectives, discuss possible execution options, and, most importantly, listen to what the designer says. The extra work you put in to this process always comes through in the final product, which will translate into a better result for your learners.
6. Use Cases
Best Practice Applications
Learner Standpoint
easy to use
Designer Standpoint
Complex Design
Designer Standpoint
Simple Design
Complex to use
Learner Standpoint
7. Core Mechanics
Mechanics that any effective learning experience demands
Progression System
Victory Condition
Strategy
Loss Aversion
Emebedded Assessments
Curiosity
Social Status
Investment
7. Resources
Bookshelf
Who Am I?
Moe Ash
Learning Architect & Founder of The Catalyst
Butter's Learning Labs Prezi Presentation