Gamification of Learning

If you’ve been in the CICs lately, you might have noticed a wall of games in the HS and puzzles on the second floor of the ES/MS. And both kids and adults are playing. The reason why is simple: games are engaging and give us a a great opportunity to socialize and have fun. This is exactly what’s happening in gamified classrooms across AISC.

If you haven’t come across an a colleague implementing gamification in the classroom or read an article on the topic, the concept is rather straightforward. Gamification is the process of designing aspects of your class around game concepts, especially those from video games. From instituting a system of points or badges to reward achievement to designing complex levels or a player’s journey, employing strategies of game design appears to have a positive impact on student engagement and motivation in the learning process.

If you want to learn more about what is happening around campus, check in with one of the following teachers about what they are currently doing or planning on for future gamification of the classroom:

• Cheri Amarna has implemented a leaderboard and badge system in her course. She uses Moodle to make these components visible to students, which keeps the positive, social competitiveness of games at just the right level to motivate students to push themselves.
• Jason Kennedy and Lauren Schneider with her co-teacher Allyson Clark have implemented leaderboards using a Google Sheet to track students progress on required skills in MS Band and achievement across a range of skills in the 4th Grade, respectively.
• Kevin Crouch created a simple leaderboard to measure progress towards achieving Google Certified Teacher recognition, and it provides a great way to see if you are keeping up with the pace of the course.
• And Marianne Brooks has gamified almost all aspects of her 5th Grade class. Her students have a series of independent levels with different “boss fights” (or learning challenges) for the entire year, there is a badges system which she implements through Edmodo, and the students have even created their own classroom economy, essentially developing their own rewards system in the game.

Gamification is an exciting way to add fun and, more importantly, engagement to student learning. If you want to know more, add a comment below or contact any one of the teachers using this strategy—we all love to share this part of our work. Or, if you want to hear about it more right now, click on the video below about one teacher’s success at gamifying his class.

Game on!