Let the gamification begin!
- Nov 28, 2017
- 2 min read
A new week and a new methodology of learning! This time, it’s the turn of Gamification: it is the process of adding games or game elements to something (such as a task) so as to encourage participation. First of all, teachers distinguished that we learn through play since the moment we’re born, but it doesn’t mean that we only learn through play, and that Gamification and Game-Based Learning (GBL) are two different methodologies.
GBL involves the use of games in educational contexts while gamification involves the use of game design elements in non-game contexts.
GBL has defined objectives and Gamification has tasks with reward.
GBL is hard and expensive to build and Gamification is easier and cheaper.
After discussing these two methodologies, we came to a conclusion that they both are good for motivating students during the learning process and that feedback is of paramount importance. In order to understand all this better, our teachers showed us a new activity based on game-based learning named Galletas. In this game, you must follow the lines to get an objective and it is really recommended to students with attention problems because they must focus just on one thing. We, as teachers, we can create new versions of this game playing with symbols, with words, depending on what we want to work with. Here you can see the example we saw in class:
Moreover, we talked about Gamification’s mechanics and dynamics. The narrative is the most important element to create any type of gamification. It includes characters, avatars, etc. The objectives are also important: we need to motivate students, make them understand the goal of the activity as well as the rules. In addition, we have to take into account some mechanics to apply gamification such as freedom of choice or missing in games which motivates players making decisions, and the feedback, the main reason why humans play to learn. cooperation, dependency and interdependency are important elements to get an effective game. Timebomb or mechanics like surprise, fear or humour prevent students get bored.
We created a Demo (see the following picture) with all these characteristics mentioned above:
And then, our teachers showed us an interesting blog about Gamification called Gamifica tu Aula and a gathering custom card generator where players can create their own cards named MTG Cardsmith.
Thanks for reading and hope you learned as much as I did!
See you next week!
Isabel
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