Turning Students Into Players: How Gamification Is Improving Education

In a time where video and mobile games are dominating the market, with sales more than doubling movie box office sales, it seems everybody wants to get in on gaming. Gamification, which applies game design and mechanics to non-game environments, has been used in marketing, social media and industry for years – now it’s making inroads into the classroom.

“Gamification allows us to push the limits,” says Justin Ballou, a Boston-area high school teacher and founder of an education-centered software startup called Socrademy.

For Ballou, using gamification in his classroom started when he was trying to figure out how to motivate students to take a nightly 10-minute online quiz. So he developed a system that uses opportunities – such as the ability to retake an in-class test – as rewards for completing the quizzes. He also shares the students’ results, like class average grades and time spent, to create a healthy dose of competition.

Ballou’s game-like method successfully motivates his students. The idea – much like in a game – is to make tasks more fun, engaging and rewarding. By pushing students to reach specific goals and complete activities, it‘s more exciting than a standard passive learning and assessment model.

Rewards Without Risk

“What’s important in education that is very prevalent in gaming is [the idea that] it’s OK to fail,” says Andrew Ko, vice president of education for Samsung. “In education, everyone has the anxiety of the test or quiz. You have to learn something, and then you stop and take a test.” Instead, gamification allows students to learn, try, fail—and try again.

A common method in gamification is to establish levels for students to pass before they’re allowed to move onto the next. The system requires them to succeed at a certain number of proficiencies in the class to earn a certain grade, unlock various opportunities or simply to earn coveted badges.

Giving badges for achievements is one of the most popular gamification methods—especially at the elementary level. Students might earn badges for completing assignments or good behavior, or they could work toward earning badges in various competencies. They could also keep track of the badges they have and those they lack on a digital platform, following their progress in both earning and learning.

For younger students, colorful badges or passing levels might be a perfect motivator even without added reward, but gamification becomes more complex when dealing with older students who have some notion of what is and isn’t valuable. For them, finding tangible rewards is a crucial part of making gamification work.

One solution for older students is to reward them with the opportunity to retake an in-class test to achieve a better grade – while the tasks themselves prepare the student to succeed on that test. On a more fun note, they might earn additional rewards like the right to eat in class or work on their own homework during test preparation classes. It’s really about speaking to student needs and wants in a way that doesn’t feel contrived to them.

Board Games and Beyond

Samsung has also designed interactive smartboards that allow educators to create classroom-wide quizzes or games, says Ko.

“It’s almost like they’re doing a little quiz show,” Ko says. “In Virginia, one school used a virtual motion game that they threw virtual darts on, and the darts had mathematical numbers. As they were throwing them, [the students would] go back and fill out questions on the quizzes.”

As technology becomes more sophisticated, it creates additional opportunities for gamification. Ko predicts educational games will soon appear that provide experiential learning using voice interaction and body movements. And according to Ballou, that could just be the shot in the arm that a flagging education system needs.

“There’s a lot of fear in education right now on behalf of students, teachers, parents, communities, that the old models aren’t working,” Ballou says. “[Gamification is] heading to a new age, looking at what really drives students to learn, and how do we meet students where they are instead of bringing them to where we are.”

Andrew Ko says both students and the education community are excited by the prospects of what gamification can deliver. And as tools like tablets and apps continue maturing, the ability to interact with games will become even more sophisticated and automated.

“Parents and teachers and principals always want the best for their students, but you’re also now seeing district leaders, government leaders really want to enhance education,” Ko says. “They are looking at way to change how things are taught, and gamification is one of those ways.”

For more information on Samsung’s solutions, click here.

Erin Richey is a freelance investigative data journalist with B2B experience. She’s written for the Engineering News-Record, the St. Louis Business Journal and has covered data security and management for small- to mid-sized businesses at TechPageOne.

※ Source : http://samsungbusiness.cio.com