Gamifying Course Content

In traditional classroom structures, students earn grades by losing points. In video games, players gain experience points (XP) to level their characters up. Implement a grade schema that mimics using XP. The Growth Engineering blog talks about using XP in a training context, but the lesson can be applied academically.

Remember when you used to get stickers on your homework? Those were the days. Badges and trophies work the same way and are used to recognize accomplishments in a course. For example, if you have a writing course and want students to attend a workshop hosted by the Writing Center, you could then reward them with a “Writing Hero” badge or trophy for their effort. Students may find it fun to try to collect as many badges/trophies as they go along.

In his blog post, Bernard Bull, gives some suggestions for how to use digital badging in your course.

• Establish a badge system design that scaffolds the learning experience, requiring certain competencies before proceeding to more complex course challenges.
• Use badges to require ongoing evidence of certain knowledge and skills over an extended time.
• Help students recognize their progress from basic skills to mastery using badge levels.

Read more at 10 Promising Practices & Possibilities for Using Digital Badges in Your Courses.

This suggestion is more about setting the mood of the course. Any gamer knows that character progression in a game is called leveling up. And progression of the game moves through stages. So, if you want to incorporate gaining XP in your grading schema, you can combine it with a simple naming convention of calling your modules “stages” and giving the students new titles when they reach specific amounts of XP gained. For instance:

0 – 100 XP = Newbie

101 – 200 XP = Novice

201 – 300 XP = Dragon Slayer

Basically, anything you want that makes sense in your course!

It doesn’t have to always be about emulating fighting games! The Faculty of Education at the University of British Columbia gamified one of its online courses on adult education. Elements of the game included role-playing, giving the "gamer" the ability to choose which tasks to complete, public acknowledgment of achievements, as well as a peer-voting system.

Watch the learning design manager, the instructor, and a student of this course talk about how the various gaming aspects of the course motivated, empowered, and engaged the students.

Allowing students to customize their content is not only great for motivation; it is best practice for creating accessible content via the Universal Design for Learning (UDL) framework. It gives students choices for how to complete assignments (paper, presentation, video) or participate in discussions (text, audio, video) whenever possible. It allows students the chance to fail and retry low-stakes quizzes (games having multiple lives).

Depending on how and where you use gamification in your course, the benefits will vary.

• Can increase student engagement
• Can help provide the motivation to complete the course
• Students are likely to spend more time on learning as the courses are fun and enjoyable
• Frequent feedback opportunities allow for deeper understanding of materials
• Students can connect socially in a familiar way
• Gamified courses lead to high performance learning and help learners in committing knowledge to long-term memory

There are cons involved in gamifying your content.

• Could possibly decrease student attention span
• Lots of initial time is needed to plan the course or build the content
• When choosing which elements to gamify, you must make sure to keep it relevant and useful

1. Better Learning Experience: The learner can experience "fun" during the game and still learn if the level of engagement is high.
2. Instant Feedback: It provides instant feedback so learners know exactly what they got right and wrong.
3. Better Learning Environment: Gamification helps learners practice real-life situations and challenges in a safe environment.
4. Prompting Behavioral Change: Points, badges, and leaderboards would surely make training awesome.
5. Can be Applied for Most Learning Needs: Gamification can be used to fulfill most learning needs including soft skills, awareness creation, and compliance.
6. Impact on Bottom Line: On account of all these aspects that touch and impact learners, it can create a significant performance gain for organizations.