Gaming in the Classroom? Why?

Conker's Bad Day Fur. (2012). Nintendo Entertainment System. Wikia. Retrieved from http://nintendo.wikia.com/wiki/List_of_Nintendo_systems?file=Nintendo_Entertainment_System_Model.png

I grew up on Nintendo, GameBoy, and any computer game I could get my hands on. Yes, I loved playing sports outside, and did a lot of that too, but gaming was probably my most time-consuming hobby. Why? Well, after taking some time this week to read about gaming in the classroom and analyzing my own experience with gaming, I came up with a list of reasons:

1. It was FUN!
2. It was challenging.
3. It gave me a sense of accomplishment when I overcame an obstacle, solved a mystery, mastered a move, or beat an adversary.
4. It was competitive when playing other real people or comparing scores with them.
5. It was addicting because I wanted to discover what was 'around the corner,' get to the next level, or find the next clue.
6. It connected with my interests. (Because of my fascination with Star Wars, Indiana Jones, and various Disney movies, I played many games based on those. I also liked to race anything in real life, so I enjoyed any good racing game too.)
7. It connected me with my friends. (I played some games just because that's what my friends invited me to play on a network, which was fun - whether in the same room on multiple computers, across the internet, or on the same gaming station).
8. It gave me a sense of control. I controlled the pace, the path, and who I played with.

I didn't grow out of gaming until mid-college, although at that point I actually made a conscious decision to stop gaming so that I could devote my time to my studies, friends, and outdoor activities. If I didn't have a family, self-discipline or goals in life, I could easily get back into my gaming habits - because it was FUN! 

But now as a teacher, I am starting to see how other teachers are successfully using gaming in the classroom to increase student achievement, engage kids, and better differentiate for each individual learner! A great example is my friend and vice principal of the school I'm at, Mark Janke. He has created his own game environment for high school and jr high history classes. You can hear him talk about gamification and how he runs his class game here. 

Going back to the 'list of reasons' above, an author and keynote speaker on gamification, Yu-kai Chou, actually created a similar list of 'core drives' that motivate people to do what they do. He calls his gamification framework, "Octalysis," seen below.

I watched his TEDx talk about it, which made a lot of sense! Here are my notes that I took from it, which are a much more research-based, intellectual 'list of reasons' for why gaming is FUN:

1. Epic Meaning & Calling – being part of something bigger than yourself
2. Development & Accomplishment – leveling up & achieving mastery
1. Short term goals being accomplished
3. Empowerment of Creativity & Feedback – building LEGOs
4. Ownership & Possession – desire to protect & build up/collect/improve
5. Social Influence & Relatedness – action based on what others do or say
6. Scarcity & Impatience – wanting something just because you can’t quite reach it!
1. Sense of urgency
7. Unpredictability & Curiosity – because you don’t know what’s happening next, you want to know! / lottery effect
8. Loss & Avoidance – doing something to avoid bad consequences

So all of this leads to the question of, is gaming in the classroom good for student learning? Yu-kai Chou would be quick to say, "YES!" He even lists 10 prime examples of gamification in the classroom, which he says produce "more effective educational environments." 

Screenshot taken at Duolingo.com

The first one happens to be Duolingo, which I have personal experience with. In fact, my wife, who is a stay-at-home mom, just started using (playing) it last week and uses it every spare moment she has! Why? For a couple reasons. 

1. She has always wanted to learn Spanish, especially living in CA. And now that we just moved into an apartment right above a Hispanic family in which the parents don't speak English, she has great motivation to do so because she wants to communicate with them! (intrinsic motivation)

2. Duolingo is fun and addicting because of its levels and badges you can achieve and earn! (extrinsic motivation)

For the past couple years I have actually had my students use Duolingo in class as a sponge activity to do for fun when they were done with all their work. And they loved it! I noticed that the badges and ability to level-up were motivating, but the most motivating factor seemed to be comparing scores and levels with each other. There is even an aspect within the game that allows people to see where they stack up to each other, which gives them a competitive reason to keep progressing. This may not be the best motivation, but according to Eric Anderson, a self-taught gamification educator, it works, and ultimately leads to students learning the required material. He has flipped and gamified his classroom, which is described in his TEDx talk. In this video he brings out some other great benefits in gamifying his classroom: 

• Students really liked being able to work at their own pace, and be challenged at the same time. (In other words, gamifying his class was a very effective way to differentiate instruction.)
• Having conditional assignments ("If you do/learn this, then you get...") help students take gradual steps in their learning.
• Students learn to learn. Instead of just doing what the teacher tells them to or hearing the teacher tell what the teacher read, students take more ownership of their learning and do more of the research themselves because they want to. The teacher becomes more of a guide on the side, not a sage on the stage.
• Since trying, failing, and repeating are inherent in video games, gamification in the classroom creates an environment in which students become more comfortable with learning from their mistakes. 

James Paul Gee, a psychologist, educator, and author of What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy, said something in a video that really hit home with the value of gamification in the classroom. He said that "We [schools] have handed [students] the manuals without the games/[activities] to go with them." That really made me think of the traditional classroom that I grew up in versus the idea of using gamification in my current classroom. If I want to cause my students to be more motivated, learn better and at their own pace, and have FUN learning at school, I need to take gaming seriously!

For further info on gaming in the classroom, check out my Diigo "Education Gamification" Outliner, which has a bunch of great resources in addition to the above mentioned ones.