Written by Melissa Stocco.
In my last post, I looked at the 15 ways gamification can be applied to education. I wanted to supplement my previous post by providing some concrete examples of how gamification is being used in the classroom. In addition, I made a list of tools for teachers and for students that utilize gamification for learning.
1. Gamification in the Classroom
Ananth Pai is a teacher from Minnesota who uses gamification to individualize learning. Students progress through their coursework at their own pace, since some students will need more time to understand the material taught in class. With this method of teaching, students only move forward once they have mastered previous course concepts. This means that all of Pai’s students are working on different assignments or activities at the same time.
7th grade English teacher Megan Ellis talks about adding gamification into her classroom to improve her students’ study skills. Megan uses experience points to her classroom to motivate her students to complete homework, be on time for class, and improve their study habits in general. Megan uses points and leveling up to encourage her students to have good behaviour and be prepared for class.
Paul Anderson is a high school science teacher who implemented game design elements in his classroom. Paul reorganized his course to allow students to learn at their own pace. Students only progress to new course concepts once they have mastered the previous material. Paul did this by creating online videos that allow his students to go through the lectures on their own, so he can use class time for activities where students can apply their knowledge. The high school teacher uses a number of different gaming elements such as leaderboards, points, progressions, challenges, and collaboration.
2. Web Applications for Teachers
Class Dojo tracks students achievements and allows teachers to share student progress with parents.
Class Craft takes teacher’s existing curriculum and adds gamification elements such as rewards, leveling up, collection points, teams and more.
Kahoot is an application that allows teachers to build quizzes which can be played with the entire classroom.
Quizizz is a tool for teachers to create and share quizzes to help make learning more engaging for their students.
Pear Deck allows teachers to create interactive presentations with built in questions. The questions have a number of different interaction types, such as drawing, multiple choice, texting, or dragging your finger to the correct answer.
3. Gamified applications for Students
Duolingo helps students learn new languages by using positive and negative feedback , incremental progressions, and rewards.
Knowre offers personalized teaching to help students learn mathematics.
Khan Academy helps students around the world learn mathematics from grade school all the way to a university level.
Memrise is a free app that allows students with memorization of languages, science terms, coding languages, mathematics formulas, and more.
Want to learn more about Gamification?
- 15 Ways Gamification Can Be Applied to Education
- Level Up! The role of progression for gameful design
- I’m in it for the prize! The role of rewards for gameful design
- Gamification: The Pursuit of Progression
Dr. Gustavo Tondello is currently an instructional support coordinator for the Cheriton School of Computer Science. He was a Ph.D. student at the University of Waterloo under supervision of Dr. Lennart Nacke and Dr. Daniel Vogel and graduate researcher at the HCI Games Group. He is a co-founder of MotiviUX and member of the International Gamification Federation. His research interests include gamification and games for health, wellbeing, and learning, user experience in gamification, and gameful design methods. His work focuses on the design and personalization of gameful applications. His recent publications advanced the current knowledge on player and user motivations in games and gameful applications and introduced new frameworks and approaches to designing personalized gameful applications and serious games. He periodically blogs about gamification for the HCI Games Group and on his personal blog, Gameful Bits. Before coming to Canada, Gustavo earned his M.Sc. in Computer Science and his B.Sc. in Information Systems from the Federal University of Santa Catarina (UFSC) and worked for several years as a Software Engineer in Brazil. Gustavo is also a Logosophy researcher affiliated to the Logosophical Foundation of Brazil and North America.
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