Gamification in Education

Unlike the last generation, youngsters and students these days get exposed to games, gaming hardware and gaming culture at a very young age. They find games a natural extension of their creative and exploration drives. They find games natural and part of their daily lives. They often use games for social interactions as well.

Image Courtesy: elearninginfographics.com

Educators have taken notice and are trying to take a page from Game Designer's book to make their educational content as fun, engaging and memorable as the games their students play. Many people believe that having leader-boards, badges etc. Are enough to “gamify” a subject but often gamification is more than that. Presented below are some often overlooked elements that goes into correctly gamifying an educational process.

Game Mechanics

Without Game Mechanics, a game cannot exist. Many attempts to gamify an educational process employs one or two elements of game theory, but fail to integrate game mechanics in a meaningful way. Game mechanics are part of game design and game designers have discovered 24 ways of motivating gamers to engage with their interactive experiences. Any attempt at integrating game design principles in education must consider these 24 principles of game design.

Bartle Test of Gamer Psychology

Bartle Test of Gamer Psychology identifies four types of gamers. Your students can take the evaluation to see which category they fall into. A good gamification design must consider all four gamer types in order to present a balanced experience for all participating students.

Gamification is an Iterative Process

Commercial games and gaming systems undergo a kill-gate model of development and those that survive have their game designs iterated and refined over numerous play sessions and focus group testing. Last things successful games and game mechanics follow are a waterfall big bang approach to development. Many companies that implement gamification solutions fail to realize the importance of this iterative process and try to deploy a one size fill all solution that seldom works. Mrs Neeru Bahl, CEO of MAGESStudio, a gamification consultancy and solutions studio says, 

“While its possible that budgets can sometimes impede the educational institutions ability to iterate as often as required, the institutions should always be cognisant of the fact that they must observe and collect feedback and data from their implementations to hone it - should the opportunity present itself.”