What is Gamification?
Gamification is the process of turning a classroom and normal activities into a game. It is a basic concept that uses a practical, applied, and hands-on approach to learning to increase student engagement, modify views and attitudes, and develop abilities.
It necessitates imagination, teamwork, and fun. There are a variety of ways to include games and gameplay in the classroom to increase learning and deepen student knowledge.
Why Use Gamification?
‘Gamification of learning may help you generate dynamic, instructional, and entertaining content regardless of your audience or topic matter.’ It’s not meant to transform work into a game, but it does tap into the psychology that motivates people to engage.
One of the main advantages of gamification is that it makes learning more interesting and instructive, owing to its interactivity. Role-playing and competitive components offer an immersive element that, when done right, may make learning more enjoyable.
How Gamification Works.
Finding the determination and endurance to complete a challenging assignment might be difficult at times. Gamification encourages people to participate in a process by making it more pleasurable. As a person becomes more involved in a course or project, their favorable feelings toward the experience grow, and they are more willing to engage on their own.
Gamification has grown in popularity in areas like health care and the workplace during the last decade. Gamified learning has also been a popular teaching approach as students embrace technology in the classroom at a greater rate than before.
When employed in schools, however, gamification, like any other method, has advantages and disadvantages.
Gamification Traps to avoid.
When implemented incorrectly, gamification in the classroom can lead to students being driven by prizes but disinterested in the learning process, which is the exact opposite of what is expected. It’s critical to grasp the distinction between internal and extrinsic drive in order to avoid this.
Intrinsic motivation occurs when students love studying for the sake of learning, such as the thrill of grasping a new concept or mastering a new ability. When pupils are motivated by external rewards or penalties, this is known as extrinsic motivation.
By selecting intrinsic rewards as a teacher, you can help students avoid being extrinsically motivated.
Instead of throwing a class party, consider devising prizes that will encourage pupils to build a passion for learning English or any other subject that is being taught.
Ways to Gamify Your Classroom.
How can we re-imagine and accelerate the learning experience by leveraging this pervasive and compelling gaming phenomenon? Here are a few ideas for gamifying your classroom, whether it’s online or in-person, to increase participation, cooperation, and learning.
Adapt old-school games for use in the classroom.
Scavenger hunts, bingo, dice games, hangman, and Scrabble have all been around for a long time and can be used in the classroom. Place vocabulary words on bingo cards and see if students can match the words to the definitions after hearing them.
Students can play Scrabble together in groups by spelling out responses to content-specific questions. Consider a scavenger hunt. If students are online, you may give them a list of items to look for around their house, which they could then present on Zoom or during a Google Meet.
Online games.
Students adore Kahoot!, Quizizz, Quizlet Live, Gimkit, and Blooket, the newest online trivia and games platform. Teachers can use these free platforms to design multiple-choice questions that students can answer on their own devices.
Teachers can also construct content-specific questions to serve as pre-assessments, quizzes, or exit tickets by selecting from the thousands of quizzes already uploaded on these sites.
Breakout EDU also features an online learning collection of digital games, riddles, and ciphers that teach critical thinking.
Kahoot: For both formative and informal quizzes, Kahoot allows instructors to create their own multiple-choice questions. Students were required to participate by answering timed questions and were ranked based on their speed and correctness. It’s available through the Kahoot! app or a web browser.
TEDEd: TEDEd is an online video library with an accompanying app that allows instructors to build interactive video lectures based on their course themes, complete with quizzes, discussion prompts, and other activities.
Gimkit: Gimkit allows instructors to construct their own game shows that students can participate in and answer on their own devices. Students work through question sets at their own pace until they master them, ensuring that they have thoroughly grasped course contents.
Find out more about my favorite online tools here ” Teachers tools to make life easier
Award badges of honor
Badges can be used to recognize mastery and accomplishment. Badges, which go beyond grades because they indicate more than just academic progress, can be used by teachers to recognize student accomplishments and mastery.
Students strive toward earning various badges in order to demonstrate mastery of a subject, standard, or ability. Once students have learned a specific ability, badges can be distributed digitally or displayed in the classroom for all to see.
Battle the boss.
A “boss” is a villain in video games who the hero must beat in order to rescue the day. The same as the monster at the end of each level in the original Super Mario game, which must be defeated before proceeding to the next level.
Teachers can design their own boss battles and quests using questions from any curriculum area on the gamification platform Classcraft. Teachers can also build their own fictional boss by utilizing Google Forms or Google Slides to create boss battles.
Freshworks can help.
Who are Freshworks, and what do they do? They are a company that will assist you in making the move to creating a loyal online following or improving your classroom experience.
Freshworks makes it simple for teachers to delight their pupils. They achieve this by employing a new strategy to designing and delivering cost-effective and user-friendly software-as-a-service.
They design technology that everyone can use, making it simple for you to create a stimulating learning environment in your classroom.
Find out how Freshworks can help you by clicking ” Freshworks for fun“
Conclusion.
Students can fail, conquer, and persevere by using games. They are given a sense of control over their learning.
your students will have influence over the decisions they make, and the more ownership they have, the better.
Instant feedback and little rewards (or large rewards, such as winning) are effective motivators.
If you like the notion of using points and badges to motivate your students, gamified learning might be for you.
However, if you have trouble prioritizing your time when it comes to course development, gamification might not be the best option. The secret to success is to start modestly and give yourself plenty of time to plan.
Are you using gamification in the classroom and is it working for you, let me know.
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Who am I?
My name is Stephen and I have been teaching EFL/ ESL for over 15 years. I have my own school and I am both the author of this article and the owner of this website.
You can check out my school here, prior to opening, after being closed due to Covid.
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