What is Gamification really? The word usually illicits a fairly gut-based response to it either being a foundational tool in modernising education or a fad to bring more unnecessary technology into the classroom.
To get a more scientific appraisal of the topic, I recently had the pleasure of chatting with Michael Drummond. Mike is a Senior Lecturer at Liverpool John Moore's University and is a Researcher in Gamification in Higher Education. He's imminently publishing his research and i managed to get the inside scoop into what he's found.
Defining Gamification
The first challenge we discovered is the lack of consistency in understanding about Gamification as a term. The scope of Gamification as a whole is so excessively broad that there's no place to trun for a "gamification 101". The only apparent consistency across academics Mike interviewed was that they all had a slightly different definition of what it is, what it could be and how it should be implemented.
We found a number of differnet terms flying around: simulation, experiential learning, serious games and so on. This range of terms (and immediate connotations of what level of academic rigour is associated with them) can cause a real challenge for academics looking to incorporate some level of gamification into their teaching, regardless of how much is already in their teaching unconciously (more on that later).
Barriers to understanding & Entry
This lack of definition makes it challenging for new entrants into the space: there's no singular definition that you can search for, there's no easy handbook to take your first steps into the field. Mike suggested that to a more traditional teacher, or one who relies on a more didactic style of teaching perhaps, this lack of clarity allows for easy dismissal of the field. It becomes natural to identify one very niche/extreme version of gamification (by someone perhaps much further along on their journey with it) and to feel like it is an impossible jump to get there and to throw out the whole concept.
As with any "new" teaching methodology the easy response of a resistant academic is to feel threatened in some way by a pedagogy that could detract from their intrinsic value. This is no criticism of that feeling - we're all in a world where you have to keep half an eye on the robots taking your jobs - but this is where the lack of clarity around what gamification really is creates more space for negative connotations.
We've all been "doing" gamification for years. It just hasn't been named before.
Gamification has been around for a while - Boy Scouts
It's easy to presume that Gamification only appeared with the advent of digital tech in the hands of students. Everyong having a phone makes it possible to create the gamified envrionment that advocates of the topic require.
Mike was quick to point out that this expansion is only due to the scale factor that digital devices provide to us. The pedagogy that sits behind it has been present for a long time.
The key motivator in getting young boys to learn complex new skills and knowledge within the Boy Scouts was to award badges. Learn to tie a particular knot - get a badge. Demonstrate your skills on a sailing boat - get a badge. A digital badge is no less "real" than one sewed on to an increasingly-crowded jumper by a parent. At its core, giving a reward as recognition for learning or applying a new skill has been a base motivaitonal theory for a lot longer than you might assume.
Mike and I delved into this topic for a while - pulling out different examples of non-digital gamification that has been around for longer than facebook. From board games to basic call-and-response teaching methods the prevalence of Gamification as a core educational tool is fairly clear to me.
In my mind this effectively deconstructs the argument that gamification is a new fad - it's been around far longer than any of us have. What is new about the current state of play is that digital scaling makes it so much easier to do when all your students have a devices ready to engage with, all the time.
Addressing Gamification in the world - News feeds and dopamime dings
Once we'd established that Gamification is not "new" we explored the concept of the newest variants of gamification.
Whilst the digital device doesn't change the pedagogy behind gamification, what it has done is make it excessively prevalent in our lives. Every App, social media platform and even news sites are designed and built around gamification principles. Apps are designed to keep your eyeballs on them for as long as possible and they do this through the insipid notification "ding" and systems designed to reward you for staying on there. Colours, interactions and layouts all designed to keep rewarding your brain for giving them attention. There are endless studies looking at the impact of social media gamification on motivation amongst users.
Conspiracy theory hats off for a moment - this behavioural motivation (whilst creepy) is not necessarily something we should reject out-of-hand. Neither of us were advocating for an Instagram-style feed of your students work or your lecturing but it is important to recognise the environment your students live in. Success stories like Duolingo attest to the power of this gamified learning. It's a shining example of how intorducing gamification can help students engage and learn with a topic that they might sturggle with otherwise.
Your students arrive to you as a product of the world they have come from. Their education, social lives and behaviours are shaped by the systems they have interacted with previously. If every other aspect of their increasingly-digital lives is governed by these motivational systems then it could well be a huge shock to the student that they come to a big lecture theatre and have to sit and passively listen to a lecture.
No wonder that some instructors have challenges getting and keeping their students engaged - the model they are used to learning with is so wholly different to the didactic.
Shaking up the classroom, or not
Whilst Mike and I were chatting about gamification he used a phrase that struck a chord with me.
"shaking up the classroom"
I've never liked this phrase in educational contexts. It always positions changes in pedagogy as radical, fundamental changes to the way that we're used to teaching. As discussed above, Gamification is not an inherently new theory; it builds on tried-and-tested methodology across decades (or even centuries) of human learning. It is just that it has become so much more accessible and easy in the digital era.
All it takes is an open mind and the willingness to try!
There's sometimes conflation of "simulation" and "gamification". Simulation is such a grand word, bringing up thoughts of complicated software and long instruction manuals (trust me, I've sold some of that software before and the handbook can be thought of as a novel). Mike urged to think of gamification as a much lighter touch. For most academics, something as simple as adding a Kahoot quiz to their lecture can be all the gamification they need, and can generate surprisingly positive results.
Students crave interaction with their teachers. Something as simple as an opportunity to demonstrate their knowledge and have that recognised (outside of a once-a-term essay) can be a really powerful weapon in your arsenal.
In the next post about this interview, we'll be delving in to the findings of Mike's research and looking at the key tenets of Gamification, what to look out for and how to make sense of the motivational theories that sit behind it
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