The gamer is a rope, tied between noob and pro -—a rope over an abyss. A dangerous across, a dangerous on-the-way, a dangerous looking-back, a dangerous shuddering and stopping. What is great in gamers is that they are a bridge and not an end; what can be loved in gamers is they are an overture and a going under. I love those who do not know how to play, for they are the ones who cross over.
What makes games fun? Why do we spend so much time playing them? As a community of gamers, Teamliquid has probably spent centuries of gameplay time saving the virtual universe millions of times over—but how much effort do we put into everyday life?
On October 03 2005 04:41 travis wrote: yesterday I went with my friend to Fred Meyer's so that I could buy 8 pairs of pants and 8 t-shirts. that way I wouldn't have to do my laundry any time soon.
Our friend Travis is not alone -- life in the first world can be a grueling struggle against the forces of stress, laziness, and boredom. However, hope can be found in a recent trend towards injecting fun and engagement into any activity you can think of:
Gamification
Gamification, according to Wikipedia, is “the use of game design techniques, game thinking, and game mechanics to enhance non-game contexts.” It is the attempt to make everyday activies as engaging, compelling, and fun as the games we play in our free time.
Typically, gamification involves one or more of the following:
Feedback - One reason we prefer games to real life is that our actions in games often have clear and immediate consequences. Positive feedback (such as points, money, progress, and levels), and negative feedback (such as damage, death, and GAME OVER) give players a sense that their actions are meaningful, and that they are in complete control of their environment, well-being, and odds of success.
Achievements - Tangible, certified proof of skill, dedication, and/or hard work isn't always available in real life, where putting in more than the required amount of effort often goes unrecognized. Achievements raise our sense of self-worth, can be shown off to others, and encourage taking on greater challenges in search of greater gratification.
Competition - Sometimes it's not enough to be good, and competition determines who is better. Our adrenaline and engagement levels rise dramatically during competitive activities, because we have more at stake than just our time and energy -- there is more to gain, and more to lose.
Cooperation - Not all games are competitive, and playing games with others is a good way to build trust, camaraderie, and teamwork. Players will exert more effort and ignore personal needs when working towards a common purpose, especially when it is a goal they could not achieve on their own. The addition of social networking mechanisms can increase accountability (and competition as well), as people take more responsibility for their actions when they are visible to others.
Immersion - Many games give us the chance to be someone (or somewhere) else for a while. Aesthetic qualities, opportunities for role-playing/individualism, and alternate reality mechanisms allow us to use our creativity and imagination to enjoy an activity, vicariously or otherwise.
Currency - (Technically part of immersion) Though we already earn money in the real world, the way we spend it is influenced by our taxes, laws, and financial situations. Alternate currencies (tokens, GP, tickets) that only work in a single context/environment give everyone the opportunity to feel "rich," and the freedom to spend their wealth however they want.
In some cases, the game mechanics are simply added on the the original activity as additional incentives, and we are free to participate or simply ignore them. Common examples of this method include frequent-flier miles for airlines, the McDonald's Monopoly event, or “employee of the month” programs. The presence of rewards, competition, and personal achievement have the power to influence decision-making when deciding how often to do an activity, where to do it, or even whether it's worth doing at all.
In other cases, gamification turns an otherwise normal activity into a game itself. If done thoroughly, this forms a completely new system of objectives, motivators, and behavior reinforcement that is subject to every aspect of game design, and can even obscure the original activity (which may or may not be the creator's intention!). The marketing industry is well aware of the effects of gamification *Science! (and marketing)*, but the controlled application of gamification as a behavior modifier can also improve lives and benefit society. Two productive examples of this approach (i.e. not McDonaldopoly) are Chore Wars and Fitocracy.
In Chore Wars, housework is integrated into a fantasy role-playing game. Each member of a household creates a personalized character who can join a party to take on (user-created) adventures, fight monsters, and earn treasure and gold. Experience is gained based on time spent doing chores, and is used for levels/stats.
In Fitocracy, users log their exercise to earn points and achievements that can be seen and compared by other users in a social network-style interface. Based on your personal info and settings, the system will suggest a variety of workouts and challenges across different forms of exercise. True, both of these use an honor-based system for logging activities, but while many people have no qualms about lying and cheating to get through school, chores, and other activities deemed "work," gamers recieve much more gratification from success when competing on an equal footing against worthy opponents, or when faced with a challenging scenario. The "social" aspect of many gamification sites encourages honesty as well: showing off achievements just isn't the same if you haven't earned them--and can even backfire if your friends are players too.
"Oh, you're Master League too? We should 1v1!"
Education
While technological innovation has led to great advances in industry, entertainment, and quality of life, the field of education (public schools in particular), has seen much less progress--especially considering its ubiquitous influence over the formative years of our lives. True, technology is making a presence in laptops, projectors, and online collaboration, but the system-wide teaching methodology is largely stagnant.
Then & Now
Engagement and motivation are paramount to success in school, yet many educational programs are designed with neither in mind. Here's a couple of the problems with traditional school systems:
Negative Reinforcement: For most school assignments, and in many cases the final grade calculation, students start out with a perfect score (100%) and are penalized downward. A few early mistakes can have a devastating effect on self-esteem, turning the rest of the semester into an uphill battle against a non-intuitive feedback system (more work does not grant greater rewards, merely less punishment), as well as a low sense of efficacy.
"Missed your first assignment? Your course grade is now an F (the F stands for failure)
Lack of Intrinsic Motivators - When we decide to perform a task, there are generally two sources of motivation: Intrinsic Motivators - Satisfaction gained from the act of performing the task, and Extrinsic Motivators - Rewards separate from the activity itself. Things like grades, diplomas, employment opportunities, and higher salary are all extrinsic motivators for doing well in school. However valuable extrinsic motivators might be, they don't increase engagement, interest, or enthusiasm during task performance quite like intrinsic motivators do--when the minimum level of performance for attaining the desired grade/reward/etc. has been achieved, students have little motivation to continue studying, or even participating, in school. This does not reinforce the most productive work/study habits, nor does it discourage cheating and cutting corners if the rewards are the same either way.
Gamifying School
Some game mechanics/design techniques have made their way into school--regardless of whether their success was attributed to game theory. Many schools already use a tiered grading system starting at 0 points, with "levels" corresponding to a final course grade, while schools that track class rank encourage a competitive "ladder" mentality (both of these mechanics have their own strengths and weaknesses). There also exists a slowly growing market for educational games (both tabletop and computer), though they tend to be limited in subject matter, budget, and demographic appeal.
"Everything I ever needed to know about hunting and dysentery"
Least common of all are attempts to transform the curriculum into a game itself. One notable example I came across was Classrealm:
Designed as a product for teachers, the idea behind Classrealm was to turn the classroom experience into an RPG. Students create their own characters, and earn XP from schoolwork to unlock achievements and rewards, as well as levels and abilities to use in both cooperative and competitive challenges set up by the teacher. The original system was developed and tested for a 6th grade class (to great success), and a Kickstarter was formed to fund/produce a fully-fledged system that could adapt to any class, subject, and grade level. Unfortunately for edventurers everywhere, it did not succeed (teachers might not be a reliable source of disposable income).
I am interested in Teamliquid's ideas, opinions, and experiences regarding gamification in school. Specifically:
1. What aspects of school do you think could be improved by gamification?
2. If School was a game, what would make you want to play it?
Any other responses/discussions/suggestions regarding the OP are also welcome. I hadn't originally planned on such a comprehensive topic, but there was no TL thread on gamification (to my surprise). Sources/Links/Related information + Show Spoiler +
If you read the OP and contribute to the discussion, you will gain 1,000 ESPORT$, +150 reputation with Flakes, and a +20 circumstance bonus to your next moderation check
This man echoes my general feelings and thoughts about gamification on the whole. While he doesn't focus on the educational stance, the ideas behind it remain usable and relevant.
Student engagement is the number one issue in education.
But I think the number one reason learning is frustrating and not fun has little to do with game mechanics. Rather it's the lack of resources when someone gets stuck and extreme punishment of failure of even small mistakes. And lack of autonomy.
Give a kid a (n almost) impossible game, tell them if they don't finish 3 levels by dinner they can't see their friends and they are going to hate it.
In a sense, play is a good metaphor for ideal learning. But gamification doesn't automatically turn learning into play. It takes the superficial characteristics of games and applies them to the learning process. If you don't address the other problems, like the lack of autonomy, frustration and the punishment mentality children will quickly realize you are trying to sugar-coat the same old stuff.
edit: For those trying to gamify their own learning, I think the main question should be: "Am I rewarding the right behaviour?" Giving a badge for reading a chapter from a book sounds nice. Unless it leads to superficial reading. Solving 5 very similar math problems is certainly worth less than solving one and thinking about it in detail.
...up the text/image ratio to make it more of a real OP
On July 06 2012 10:12 hypercube wrote: Student engagement is the number one issue in education.
But I think the number one reason learning is frustrating and not fun has little to do with game mechanics. Rather it's the lack of resources when someone gets stuck and extreme punishment of failure of even small mistakes. And lack of autonomy.
Give a kid a (n almost) impossible game, tell them if they don't finish 3 levels by dinner they can't see their friends and they are going to hate it.
In a sense, play is a good metaphor for ideal learning. But gamification doesn't automatically turn learning into play. It takes the superficial characteristics of games and applies them to the learning process. If you don't address the other problems, like the lack of autonomy, frustration and the punishment mentality children will quickly realize you are trying to sugar-coat the same old stuff.
edit: For those trying to gamify their own learning, I think the main question should be: "Am I rewarding the right behaviour?" Giving a badge for reading a chapter from a book sounds nice. Unless it leads to superficial reading. Solving 5 very similar math problems is certainly worth less than solving one and thinking about it in detail.
Thanks for the input! I believe that the use of "sugar-coating" in teaching is simply getting the kids to want to be in class and try new things (in the hope that they will find value in the activity). While this works at very low levels of education, you are right that it's not sustainable.
One of the great things about game design is that you can reward different behaviors, particularly ones requiring greater critical thinking on the part of the player. For example, rewarding "reading a book" vs. "writing a report on a book" vs "writing a short story sequel to a book" all encourage different skills & thought processes. This begs the question of whether getting students to think deeply about the material is enough (after all, they are learning the material effectively), or whether they must also learn the value in gaining knowledge.
I probably will add something about autonomy or self-determination or empowerment in the "problems with school system" section if I can think of a good way to phrase it.
As someone just like everyone else on TL (a game addict), I find it sad that our generation is so spoiled as to find any degree of monotony or drudgery intolerable. Life isn't always fun, but I guess we can still attempt to amuse ourselves nonstop until we die. That said, I do think gamification can have appropriate applications.
In my opinion you need a solid combination of positive and negative reinforcement. School or education in general has a tendency to give too much negative feedback and not enough positive feedback.
A fun example I witnessed in my own behaviour occurs when you compare the "punishment/reward" features in DotA 2 and LoL. In LoL, you can only report players. In DotA 2 you can either report people or you can commend them. The commendations are there for everyone to be seen and have no effect beyond that at the moment. However, personally for me, the chance to be "commended" if I was nice and did well is way more motivating to show that behaviour than the chance to simply "not be reported".
Transferring that example to school the motivation is usually fueled by "get punished for bad grades" and "get not punished for good grades" because those are (usually both by parents and teachers) already expected. To be "good at school" is what's considered the norm - that automatically devalues doing well and makes doing bad demotivating - it shows you're somehow "worse" than others.
The problem with positive reinforcements at school however is that you also have to take the social factors into account. A day off for each A/1 you get in your half year marks? If used badly that kid will be bullied to hell and back because he gets benefits that are very wanted and obvious. Benefits, taking the social circle into account, have to be small, visible for everyone and reinforced by the social structure around them.
For parents positive reinforcement is much easier to achieve. Some of my friends back at school got a few bucks for good grades, they knew they'd get their favorite meal, stuff like that. However, now that I'm also friends with parents I feel that the biggest problem here is taking it for granted that your kid is good at school. That's the biggest possible motivational killer. - Bring home an A and everyone is like "oh cool", bring home a C- and you get shouted at for hours. I doubt that's a good parenting system.
PS: I'd really like to see some cool ideas for what schools could do within the boundaries outlined above. Most of the stuff I can think about like "gets some hours off" / "gets to be first in line in the cafeteria" are all social venom so to speak. =S
PPS: This post was completely motivated by the "+20 circumstance bonus to your next moderation check" bonus, since I felt bad for posting substandard in the LoL General forum before this. >_<
Honestly, at school I would have found this kind of lame. Maybe it's helpful for those who aren't particularly engaged and need prodding in the right direction. But for the people who are already high achievers, well... this is just not how they learn. Such students already have extremely strong intrinsic motivators.
As a current student (and I like to think I am a relatively successful one at that) I understand that it might seem necessary to gamify certain aspects of school. But I agree with whatthefat in his assessment, it just is not engaging or cool. I know that I have strong intrinsic and extrinsic motivators in my education, but to me, making learning more game like is would not be effective.
holy shit really nice and interesting thread! as technology improves education should improve further, and it would be interesting to see education... "gamified"
You bring up good points for example doing bad can really hurt self-esteem. For example if you mess something up (like anything as simple as moving all your test answers up or down 1 space so that almost all are wrong) then you're looking at having to 100% the rest of the quarter in order to settle for an A-. That's really not fun.
Some students already motivate themselves to do well so they can show off and/or be looked up at and/or respected, etc. from their friends. I didn't realize I should have tried to motivate myself like that until end of senior year in high school
If it was more like a game or the perspective was changed just slightly so that work and such was more like a game (achievements, challenges, IMPROVEMENT, etc.) it could be much more fun.
For example showing grades in class on a wall, maybe with name (usually I think it's with the student's number so you don't know who's who). Having extra credit for all classes! To compensate, you could make the rest of the class harder (to make it "balanced" as it was previously).
Have grades start at 0 and increase as you do more work! Instead of starting at 100. This may require more planning from teachers (not as much flexibility or else they can't display your grade accurately before that).
Maybe instead of just showing grades off in 1 list (for a class), also show different areas of the student's grade. Have a ranking for test scores, homework scores, etc. etc. So that even if your overall grade is bad, you could still motivate/show off by doing very well on a test and increasing on rank, or simply having others see that you did so well on the test.
Obviously something like that could make those, who want to remain anonymous and not have others' see their score, feel uncomfortable.. I don't think it would hurt to have those people opt to not have their grades shown on those lists. The rest of the people who have decent or better grades should feel comfortable to have their grades shown, so they can compete with their friends. They could also just share information by word of mouth, but usually there are several cliques per class so a unified ranking of grades could be effective.
On July 06 2012 13:41 whatthefat wrote: Honestly, at school I would have found this kind of lame. Maybe it's helpful for those who aren't particularly engaged and need prodding in the right direction. But for the people who are already high achievers, well... this is just not how they learn. Such students already have extremely strong intrinsic motivators.
On July 06 2012 14:06 Scurvy wrote: As a current student (and I like to think I am a relatively successful one at that) I understand that it might seem necessary to gamify certain aspects of school. But I agree with whatthefat in his assessment, it just is not engaging or cool. I know that I have strong intrinsic and extrinsic motivators in my education, but to me, making learning more game like is would not be effective.
It is true that high achievers and natural learners would gain little from gamification, as it is a system designed for behavior modification (which good students would naturally resist). Your concerns are valid because gamifying a curriculum only really works if the entire class is following the same set of rules.
As for it being lame and uncool... I couldn't find any gamified education systems on the same scale as Classrealm (every subject, for the entire school year) at a higher level than 6th grade The theory itself, however, can be applied with more subtle mechanisms than wizards, mermaids, and vampire ninjas (for instance, the "karma" system of sites like Reddit is a sort of gamification).
So either they are hard to find because no one's done it right, or because they don't work Either way, thanks for the feedback
On July 06 2012 12:48 r.Evo wrote: In my opinion you need a solid combination of positive and negative reinforcement. School or education in general has a tendency to give too much negative feedback and not enough positive feedback.
A fun example I witnessed in my own behaviour occurs when you compare the "punishment/reward" features in DotA 2 and LoL. In LoL, you can only report players. In DotA 2 you can either report people or you can commend them. The commendations are there for everyone to be seen and have no effect beyond that at the moment. However, personally for me, the chance to be "commended" if I was nice and did well is way more motivating to show that behaviour than the chance to simply "not be reported".
Transferring that example to school the motivation is usually fueled by "get punished for bad grades" and "get not punished for good grades" because those are (usually both by parents and teachers) already expected. To be "good at school" is what's considered the norm - that automatically devalues doing well and makes doing bad demotivating - it shows you're somehow "worse" than others.
The problem with positive reinforcements at school however is that you also have to take the social factors into account. A day off for each A/1 you get in your half year marks? If used badly that kid will be bullied to hell and back because he gets benefits that are very wanted and obvious. Benefits, taking the social circle into account, have to be small, visible for everyone and reinforced by the social structure around them.
On July 06 2012 14:19 Yoshi Kirishima wrote: For example showing grades in class on a wall, maybe with name (usually I think it's with the student's number so you don't know who's who). ... Maybe instead of just showing grades off in 1 list (for a class), also show different areas of the student's grade. Have a ranking for test scores, homework scores, etc. etc. So that even if your overall grade is bad, you could still motivate/show off by doing very well on a test and increasing on rank, or simply having others see that you did so well on the test.
Obviously something like that could make those, who want to remain anonymous and not have others' see their score, feel uncomfortable.. I don't think it would hurt to have those people opt to not have their grades shown on those lists. The rest of the people who have decent or better grades should feel comfortable to have their grades shown, so they can compete with their friends. They could also just share information by word of mouth, but usually there are several cliques per class so a unified ranking of grades could be effective.
Messing with competition and other social mechanics is definitely a problem once students start hitting puberty (speaking from experience as a former summer camp counselor), and would definitely have to be downplayed. One thing mentioned by both the Classrealm creator and in the Extra Credits episode (in the links section) was specifically encouraging cooperative/supportive behavior by using class-wide rewards -- for example, a reward contingent on everyone meeting a certain threshold of performance/good behavior.
The current fundamental problem (that led to products like Classrealm in the first place) is how much work gamification is for individual teachers -- who receive almost no support from either their students or the school administration. The teachers would be held accountable for any exploits, harassment, or unfair situations generated by the students.
Then again, it's not called "gaming the system" for nothing : \
Lack of Intrinsic Motivators - ... However valuable extrinsic motivators might be, they don't increase engagement, interest, or enthusiasm during task performance quite like intrinsic motivators do--when the minimum level of performance for attaining the desired grade/reward/etc.
In higher education, at least, the intrinsic value will always be the ideas being discussed and explored (the subject matter), not the fun of manipulating some underlying game. That is why "game theory" is the proper subject of Liquipedia, but "playing a game" is the proper subject of Starcraft.
- "gamification" seems an overly positive attitude when those who are knee-deep in games in general seem to be part of society's underachievers for many reasons, but mostly because they physically lack time to accomplish anything*. This comes from an exclusively ludologistic approach to game, while a narratologist point of view helps to understand the most addictive faces of video games (and entertainment systems in general). Another mistake lies in the idea that a gamer's mediocrity comes from an unused potential; he does so well in simulations, why wouldn't he succeed in life? Because the very reason he plays games is that he doesn't want to deal with real life problems. A gamer is often a mediocre individual, and that's the end of it. Change won't come from video games, but from a radically different approach to his free time.
- while schools can benefit from the introduction of gamification, they would mostly gain a lot by any sort of change. The true source of innovation isn't a game, but the psychologic and ergonomic theories and technologies behind that game. I do agree that there is a sort of urgency to adapt education methods to changes that have ocurred since the early 19th century, but solutions will come from everywhere, and not only from video games and interactive new medias.
Games are awesome and fascinating, but there is as much good as bad in them.
*assuming they wouldn't use any additional free time to play more games
On July 06 2012 12:48 r.Evo wrote: In my opinion you need a solid combination of positive and negative reinforcement. School or education in general has a tendency to give too much negative feedback and not enough positive feedback.
A fun example I witnessed in my own behaviour occurs when you compare the "punishment/reward" features in DotA 2 and LoL. In LoL, you can only report players. In DotA 2 you can either report people or you can commend them. The commendations are there for everyone to be seen and have no effect beyond that at the moment. However, personally for me, the chance to be "commended" if I was nice and did well is way more motivating to show that behaviour than the chance to simply "not be reported".
Transferring that example to school the motivation is usually fueled by "get punished for bad grades" and "get not punished for good grades" because those are (usually both by parents and teachers) already expected. To be "good at school" is what's considered the norm - that automatically devalues doing well and makes doing bad demotivating - it shows you're somehow "worse" than others.
The problem with positive reinforcements at school however is that you also have to take the social factors into account. A day off for each A/1 you get in your half year marks? If used badly that kid will be bullied to hell and back because he gets benefits that are very wanted and obvious. Benefits, taking the social circle into account, have to be small, visible for everyone and reinforced by the social structure around them.
On July 06 2012 14:19 Yoshi Kirishima wrote: For example showing grades in class on a wall, maybe with name (usually I think it's with the student's number so you don't know who's who). ... Maybe instead of just showing grades off in 1 list (for a class), also show different areas of the student's grade. Have a ranking for test scores, homework scores, etc. etc. So that even if your overall grade is bad, you could still motivate/show off by doing very well on a test and increasing on rank, or simply having others see that you did so well on the test.
Obviously something like that could make those, who want to remain anonymous and not have others' see their score, feel uncomfortable.. I don't think it would hurt to have those people opt to not have their grades shown on those lists. The rest of the people who have decent or better grades should feel comfortable to have their grades shown, so they can compete with their friends. They could also just share information by word of mouth, but usually there are several cliques per class so a unified ranking of grades could be effective.
Messing with competition and other social mechanics is definitely a problem once students start hitting puberty (speaking from experience as a former summer camp counselor), and would definitely have to be downplayed. One thing mentioned by both the Classrealm creator and in the Extra Credits episode (in the links section) was specifically encouraging cooperative/supportive behavior by using class-wide rewards -- for example, a reward contingent on everyone meeting a certain threshold of performance/good behavior.
The current fundamental problem (that led to products like Classrealm in the first place) is how much work gamification is for individual teachers -- who receive almost no support from either their students or the school administration. The teachers would be held accountable for any exploits, harassment, or unfair situations generated by the students.
Then again, it's not called "gaming the system" for nothing : \
Oh, so it's more like if the class as an entity gets xy points total they get a benefit as whole?
I can definitly see that working, that actually encourages helping out the weaker ones and celebrating the good ones. There's no need however to pack that into a game, can definitly do this in some kind of more subtle way.
Edit: Wow. The more I think about this the more I think it is actually a really, really great concept. It's very similar to those games where you have groups competing against others where the group as a whole has to solve riddles quickly. The people who are the "nerds" in those groups are actually getting celebrated because they benefit the group as a whole. That concept is just great.
Basically it would mean, if class X gets an average of Z or better, they get a cool advantage like having a few hours off or getting to go home earlier on a certain day per month. Suddenly the group as a whole (as long as the goal is still achievable) has a reason to push weaker students and help them out while the good students get positive feedback from the group.
I really, really would like to see how that works in practice. It's kind of a reversal of that class A vs class B experiment abusing the positive parts of the group dynamics.
MICRONESIA WHERE ARE YOU CAN YOU TRY THIS OUT PLZ? =D
This is the kind of thing that gets out of hand real quickly. The gaming world and real life should be kept as seperate as possible due to the fact that there is always a small % that take things in the wrong light and cause sevre consequences. All it takes is for another crazy person to grab a gun and start shooting people because he plays CoD or CS:S and thinks that if he does so the world will be a better place, or that he is just angry and doesn't like person "x".
This gamerfication term should not be crossed over with anything else and should be scrapped before the press get hold of it and point it into the bad frame of light that we are always being labelled into. The system itself to the regular human being or child (which i think this is personally aimed at) it has good value in making "chores" fun or "fitness" fun just like games are to children, but it will get turned and twisted into a wrong aspect very quickly by the small % and then you have a shit storm on your hands faster than you know, and again gamers are looked as 1. weird and 2. sociopathic.
Also, the only thing in real life which is close to any game reference is the fact that you have to work to get currency. You do a quest or a challenge to get currency in a game, in real life you get given a job/task and you get paid for it thus the same. The only way the gaming world has any relevance to real life imo.
Adding this into school educational system has little rewards imo. The ability to make "learning" fun is not how we should be going about education. Education is your first step towards work, the ability to meet deadlines (homework) and produce good work (assignments via grading) is just excatly what work is all about, and turning up on time to school itself is key. Education system shouldn't meet the gaming system, however saying that you can possibly add this system to early learning 10year olds and under, teaching them to that way can be useful, making weekly assignments based on "quests" with chores at home and fitness is a good way to improve the youth of today (maybe, but im sure there will be repercussions on that by human rights activists as there always is) and im sure the goverment would back that type of initiative. Bringing it into highschool and higher education would be a very bad move.
1. What aspects of school do you think could be improved by gamification? 2. If School was a game, what would make you want to play it?
This was an interesting read. Thanks for taking the time, OP. Studying could definitely use some sort of gamification. I know that there are studying games, but we could definitely use some more work in that area. Some sort of social-studying-network game for the average student would be huge.
Who is to say that school is not already a game? We're all competing in the same sense. I think the key idea here is that, gamification is the idea of replicating real life to satisfy people. Events go by so quickly in a videogame that would normally take a lot longer in real life. It is just that, school is a more drawn out process than a videogame. If you were to take out all of the hardships of school, students would be left no real experiences. In other words, if you take out the rigorousness of school, you'll be left with no benchmark. Of course, I'm in no way saying that the use of gamification would be a harmful aspect to education. It would just need to be monitored very, very closely.
On July 06 2012 12:48 r.Evo wrote: In my opinion you need a solid combination of positive and negative reinforcement. School or education in general has a tendency to give too much negative feedback and not enough positive feedback.
A fun example I witnessed in my own behaviour occurs when you compare the "punishment/reward" features in DotA 2 and LoL. In LoL, you can only report players. In DotA 2 you can either report people or you can commend them. The commendations are there for everyone to be seen and have no effect beyond that at the moment. However, personally for me, the chance to be "commended" if I was nice and did well is way more motivating to show that behaviour than the chance to simply "not be reported".
Transferring that example to school the motivation is usually fueled by "get punished for bad grades" and "get not punished for good grades" because those are (usually both by parents and teachers) already expected. To be "good at school" is what's considered the norm - that automatically devalues doing well and makes doing bad demotivating - it shows you're somehow "worse" than others.
The problem with positive reinforcements at school however is that you also have to take the social factors into account. A day off for each A/1 you get in your half year marks? If used badly that kid will be bullied to hell and back because he gets benefits that are very wanted and obvious. Benefits, taking the social circle into account, have to be small, visible for everyone and reinforced by the social structure around them.
On July 06 2012 14:19 Yoshi Kirishima wrote: For example showing grades in class on a wall, maybe with name (usually I think it's with the student's number so you don't know who's who). ... Maybe instead of just showing grades off in 1 list (for a class), also show different areas of the student's grade. Have a ranking for test scores, homework scores, etc. etc. So that even if your overall grade is bad, you could still motivate/show off by doing very well on a test and increasing on rank, or simply having others see that you did so well on the test.
Obviously something like that could make those, who want to remain anonymous and not have others' see their score, feel uncomfortable.. I don't think it would hurt to have those people opt to not have their grades shown on those lists. The rest of the people who have decent or better grades should feel comfortable to have their grades shown, so they can compete with their friends. They could also just share information by word of mouth, but usually there are several cliques per class so a unified ranking of grades could be effective.
Messing with competition and other social mechanics is definitely a problem once students start hitting puberty (speaking from experience as a former summer camp counselor), and would definitely have to be downplayed. One thing mentioned by both the Classrealm creator and in the Extra Credits episode (in the links section) was specifically encouraging cooperative/supportive behavior by using class-wide rewards -- for example, a reward contingent on everyone meeting a certain threshold of performance/good behavior.
The current fundamental problem (that led to products like Classrealm in the first place) is how much work gamification is for individual teachers -- who receive almost no support from either their students or the school administration. The teachers would be held accountable for any exploits, harassment, or unfair situations generated by the students.
Then again, it's not called "gaming the system" for nothing : \
Oh, so it's more like if the class as an entity gets xy points total they get a benefit as whole?
I can definitly see that working, that actually encourages helping out the weaker ones and celebrating the good ones. There's no need however to pack that into a game, can definitly do this in some kind of more subtle way.
Edit: Wow. The more I think about this the more I think it is actually a really, really great concept. It's very similar to those games where you have groups competing against others where the group as a whole has to solve riddles quickly. The people who are the "nerds" in those groups are actually getting celebrated because they benefit the group as a whole. That concept is just great.
Basically it would mean, if class X gets an average of Z or better, they get a cool advantage like having a few hours off or getting to go home earlier on a certain day per month. Suddenly the group as a whole (as long as the goal is still achievable) has a reason to push weaker students and help them out while the good students get positive feedback from the group.
I really, really would like to see how that works in practice. It's kind of a reversal of that class A vs class B experiment abusing the positive parts of the group dynamics.
MICRONESIA WHERE ARE YOU CAN YOU TRY THIS OUT PLZ? =D
What do the kids get when they accomplish the objective? Food? Money?
I don't have any two classes that are learning the same material... how do I create competition? Split the class down the middle?
A lot of this stuff sounds great in theory but isn't so easy to implement... especially by the teacher alone.
On July 06 2012 19:26 Pandemona wrote: This is the kind of thing that gets out of hand real quickly. The gaming world and real life should be kept as seperate as possible due to the fact that there is always a small % that take things in the wrong light and cause sevre consequences. All it takes is for another crazy person to grab a gun and start shooting people because he plays CoD or CS:S and thinks that if he does so the world will be a better place, or that he is just angry and doesn't like person "x".
This gamerfication term should not be crossed over with anything else and should be scrapped before the press get hold of it and point it into the bad frame of light that we are always being labelled into. The system itself to the regular human being or child (which i think this is personally aimed at) it has good value in making "chores" fun or "fitness" fun just like games are to children, but it will get turned and twisted into a wrong aspect very quickly by the small % and then you have a shit storm on your hands faster than you know, and again gamers are looked as 1. weird and 2. sociopathic.
Also, the only thing in real life which is close to any game reference is the fact that you have to work to get currency. You do a quest or a challenge to get currency in a game, in real life you get given a job/task and you get paid for it thus the same. The only way the gaming world has any relevance to real life imo.
Adding this into school educational system has little rewards imo. The ability to make "learning" fun is not how we should be going about education. Education is your first step towards work, the ability to meet deadlines (homework) and produce good work (assignments via grading) is just excatly what work is all about, and turning up on time to school itself is key. Education system shouldn't meet the gaming system, however saying that you can possibly add this system to early learning 10year olds and under, teaching them to that way can be useful, making weekly assignments based on "quests" with chores at home and fitness is a good way to improve the youth of today (maybe, but im sure there will be repercussions on that by human rights activists as there always is) and im sure the goverment would back that type of initiative. Bringing it into highschool and higher education would be a very bad move.
Sigh so much ignorance in this post. First off, no one goes out and shoots someone because of a game. People who go out and shoot people do so because they have issues long before they started playing some violent game. You say gamification will get twisted by a small minority of people yet you fail to specify how. If we as gamers do not use something like gamification to portray gaming in a positive light, then how are we going going to change the label society tries to put on us? There is so much wrong with the statement I bolded. Learning should be fun. What I am hearing from your post is that learning should always be lecture based and punishment oriented. I say punishment oriented because you are punished for not doing your work, punished for not showing up on time, punished for not doing a good job, et cetera. That is a broken education system. Even work has promotions, bonuses, employee of the month, and etc. to motivate employees. Children and even adults are far better motivated by positive reinforcement rather than the punishment oriented system that we currently use.
On July 06 2012 19:26 Pandemona wrote: This is the kind of thing that gets out of hand real quickly. The gaming world and real life should be kept as seperate as possible due to the fact that there is always a small % that take things in the wrong light and cause sevre consequences. All it takes is for another crazy person to grab a gun and start shooting people because he plays CoD or CS:S and thinks that if he does so the world will be a better place, or that he is just angry and doesn't like person "x".
This gamerfication term should not be crossed over with anything else and should be scrapped before the press get hold of it and point it into the bad frame of light that we are always being labelled into. The system itself to the regular human being or child (which i think this is personally aimed at) it has good value in making "chores" fun or "fitness" fun just like games are to children, but it will get turned and twisted into a wrong aspect very quickly by the small % and then you have a shit storm on your hands faster than you know, and again gamers are looked as 1. weird and 2. sociopathic.
Also, the only thing in real life which is close to any game reference is the fact that you have to work to get currency. You do a quest or a challenge to get currency in a game, in real life you get given a job/task and you get paid for it thus the same. The only way the gaming world has any relevance to real life imo.
Adding this into school educational system has little rewards imo. The ability to make "learning" fun is not how we should be going about education. Education is your first step towards work, the ability to meet deadlines (homework) and produce good work (assignments via grading) is just excatly what work is all about, and turning up on time to school itself is key. Education system shouldn't meet the gaming system, however saying that you can possibly add this system to early learning 10year olds and under, teaching them to that way can be useful, making weekly assignments based on "quests" with chores at home and fitness is a good way to improve the youth of today (maybe, but im sure there will be repercussions on that by human rights activists as there always is) and im sure the goverment would back that type of initiative. Bringing it into highschool and higher education would be a very bad move.
[1]Sigh so much ignorance in this post. [2]First off, no one goes out and shoots someone because of a game. People who go out and shoot people do so because they have issues long before they started playing some violent game. [3]You say gamification will get twisted by a small minority of people yet you fail to specify how. [4] If we as gamers do not use something like gamification to portray gaming in a positive light, then how are we going going to change the label society tries to put on us? [5]There is so much wrong with the statement I bolded. Learning should be fun. What I am hearing from your post is that learning should always be lecture based and punishment oriented. I say punishment oriented because you are punished for not doing your work, punished for not showing up on time, punished for not doing a good job, et cetera. That is a broken education system. Even work has promotions, bonuses, employee of the month, and etc. to motivate employees. Children and even adults are far better motivated by positive reinforcement rather than the punishment oriented system that we currently use.
[1] You miss read everything if it comes across as ignorance [2] No i didn't mean to say people shoot people because of video games, i say thats how the press label it. Take the norwegian nut case, he went out shoots lots of people as an activist for a terrorists organisation, as soon as they find out he played Call of Duty it was the games fault in the media (maybe not in your country but in England it was highlighted a lot) Press constantly link the two when they have a point and people eat it up, even my parents say all "gamers are weirdos" (don't worry i heavily correct them ;; ) [3] The press, the press get hold of a rampage by anyone and link it to them playing a video game if they have evidence to do so. [4] We will never be able to change what societ labels us, (i am going to add a statement which is a mjority based statement which can be deemed racist but i do not mean it and it is not my view.) take Pakistanni's as an example, they are deemed as terrorists all of them by certain individuals, the majority think they are all like the terrorists and hate everything the US and UK stand for and want to kill all of them, yet that is not the case, its a small minority of them which are corrupted into beleiving the above and 95%+ are regular people just trying to live their lives. Gamers are the same, they are portrayed as locked in a bedroom in a dark room with no social life and locked away from the world learning twisted things on the inernet. When we all know thats only a certain % of people and that the majority of gamers (again 90% or more) live normal lives of going to work and socialising outside of work as well as gaming because gaming is after all just a hobby not a way of life. But the media and society will never see that like in the case of terrorists due to the way things are portrayed, you will never stop it even if you set out all the positive'ness you want, in this cast "gamification" [5] Learning should be fun for people under 10, they should be eased into wanting to learn at a young age and then turned into a man and women as they enter high school. Whats the use in turning into a job thinking its going to be "fun" and what you learnt (and the way you learn it) is how it is done in the working world, it is not. If you turn up late to a job more than 3 times you will get fired, if you do crap work more than 3 times you will be fired, if you fail to meet deadlines you will be fired. What is the point in not hammering home these rules in school education system when they are at a certain age for them to start to learn to understand this. Im not saying children and teenagers should not get rewards for a successful year in school or great grades or work, they should, and there is the right routes to do this without changing the whole education system into gamification. To reward children and teenagers with a couple of "field" trips or days out to theme parks a year should be plenty.
I would never like school, no matter what you change about it. Nothing would motivate me to go back to school. It doesnt matter if i get achievement points and a shiney pop-up for getting an A on the math test, I'll still hate it because of the material and the effort it would take me to complete it. Even if I did get an A, i would thank whatever supernatural forces are out there in the universe that it is finally over, immediatly forget the material, and move on.
I've had teachers that have tried their damnedest to make their material/subject more 'interesting' or 'entertaining', and I appreciate that they know their students dont like their material because it's difficult, or memory based, or tedious, but it just doesnt work. Most people arent stupid (the ones that actually go to school lol) and they know what the teacher is trying to do, and they arent falling for it. You cant force someone to like something that they hate doing.
My dead-end database entry office job would not be more entertaining if I got more rewards for doing it. It would still be the most boring job on the planet, it would still be the same work. Even if they trippled my pay, I would still be pissed off about having to get up early every day and go to this job for 8.5 hours 5 days a week.
Games are games. Work is work. School is school. That is just the way life is. Some people like work and school, some dont. You cant change that by putting a mask on it.
If it was up to me, and I can just make miracles happen and change anything, then sure I would change work and school into something that every single person can find entertaining, motivating, interesting, "fun". But it is nothing but a fairy tale. There are the lucky few that make their jobs into gaming itself, and then there is the rest of us wishing we were them.
Those proposals are really vague. In particular, when I read about the "gamification" of education, with levels awarded for completing tasks etc., it really reminds me of, between other things, the army or the promotion system in enterprises. Would you call life in those organisations a game ? I also don't see why you would want to enhance human learning and education. It's very fine like it is.
Negative Reinforcement: For most school assignments, and in many cases the final grade calculation, students start out with a perfect score (100%) and are penalized downward. A few early mistakes can have a devastating effect on self-esteem, turning the rest of the semester into an uphill battle against a non-intuitive feedback system (more work does not grant greater rewards, merely less punishment), as well as a low sense of efficacy.
How could most grades be calculated that way ? The only time ever I've seen that was for orthography tests.
On July 07 2012 04:27 Kyrillion wrote: Those proposals are really vague. In particular, when I read about the "gamification" of education, with levels awarded for completing tasks etc., it really reminds me of, between other things, the army or the promotion system in enterprises. Would you call life in those organisations a game ? I also don't see why you would want to enhance human learning and education. It's very fine like it is.
There are different degrees of gamification, and game mechanics can be implemented without distorting the activity itself. One example would be the "3-strikes" mechanic from baseball. It is formally used in traffic law in my state and others (I don't know if it's just an east coast thing), and more casually in classrooms/youth activities, and is analogous to "lives/hitpoints" in games. Despite this, I would not call it an attempt to make traffic law "fun" The "Prisoner's Dilemma" is a central implementation of Game Theory, but that does not make prison a game either.
Negative Reinforcement: For most school assignments, and in many cases the final grade calculation, students start out with a perfect score (100%) and are penalized downward. A few early mistakes can have a devastating effect on self-esteem, turning the rest of the semester into an uphill battle against a non-intuitive feedback system (more work does not grant greater rewards, merely less punishment), as well as a low sense of efficacy.
How could most grades be calculated that way ? The only time ever I've seen that was for orthography tests.
At least in my school and many I've seen, grading calculation tends to start with full points and subtract points for each mistake. From my perspective this was generally the norm pre-College level where assignments are smaller and don't have grading rubriks identifying the point values of each component of the assignment being turned in. Assignments were then averaged using weight multipliers to calculate the course grade.
It is entirely possible that your experience was different
On July 06 2012 12:48 r.Evo wrote: In my opinion you need a solid combination of positive and negative reinforcement. School or education in general has a tendency to give too much negative feedback and not enough positive feedback.
A fun example I witnessed in my own behaviour occurs when you compare the "punishment/reward" features in DotA 2 and LoL. In LoL, you can only report players. In DotA 2 you can either report people or you can commend them. The commendations are there for everyone to be seen and have no effect beyond that at the moment. However, personally for me, the chance to be "commended" if I was nice and did well is way more motivating to show that behaviour than the chance to simply "not be reported".
Transferring that example to school the motivation is usually fueled by "get punished for bad grades" and "get not punished for good grades" because those are (usually both by parents and teachers) already expected. To be "good at school" is what's considered the norm - that automatically devalues doing well and makes doing bad demotivating - it shows you're somehow "worse" than others.
The problem with positive reinforcements at school however is that you also have to take the social factors into account. A day off for each A/1 you get in your half year marks? If used badly that kid will be bullied to hell and back because he gets benefits that are very wanted and obvious. Benefits, taking the social circle into account, have to be small, visible for everyone and reinforced by the social structure around them.
On July 06 2012 14:19 Yoshi Kirishima wrote: For example showing grades in class on a wall, maybe with name (usually I think it's with the student's number so you don't know who's who). ... Maybe instead of just showing grades off in 1 list (for a class), also show different areas of the student's grade. Have a ranking for test scores, homework scores, etc. etc. So that even if your overall grade is bad, you could still motivate/show off by doing very well on a test and increasing on rank, or simply having others see that you did so well on the test.
Obviously something like that could make those, who want to remain anonymous and not have others' see their score, feel uncomfortable.. I don't think it would hurt to have those people opt to not have their grades shown on those lists. The rest of the people who have decent or better grades should feel comfortable to have their grades shown, so they can compete with their friends. They could also just share information by word of mouth, but usually there are several cliques per class so a unified ranking of grades could be effective.
Messing with competition and other social mechanics is definitely a problem once students start hitting puberty (speaking from experience as a former summer camp counselor), and would definitely have to be downplayed. One thing mentioned by both the Classrealm creator and in the Extra Credits episode (in the links section) was specifically encouraging cooperative/supportive behavior by using class-wide rewards -- for example, a reward contingent on everyone meeting a certain threshold of performance/good behavior.
The current fundamental problem (that led to products like Classrealm in the first place) is how much work gamification is for individual teachers -- who receive almost no support from either their students or the school administration. The teachers would be held accountable for any exploits, harassment, or unfair situations generated by the students.
Then again, it's not called "gaming the system" for nothing : \
Oh, so it's more like if the class as an entity gets xy points total they get a benefit as whole?
I can definitly see that working, that actually encourages helping out the weaker ones and celebrating the good ones. There's no need however to pack that into a game, can definitly do this in some kind of more subtle way.
Edit: Wow. The more I think about this the more I think it is actually a really, really great concept. It's very similar to those games where you have groups competing against others where the group as a whole has to solve riddles quickly. The people who are the "nerds" in those groups are actually getting celebrated because they benefit the group as a whole. That concept is just great.
Basically it would mean, if class X gets an average of Z or better, they get a cool advantage like having a few hours off or getting to go home earlier on a certain day per month. Suddenly the group as a whole (as long as the goal is still achievable) has a reason to push weaker students and help them out while the good students get positive feedback from the group.
I really, really would like to see how that works in practice. It's kind of a reversal of that class A vs class B experiment abusing the positive parts of the group dynamics.
MICRONESIA WHERE ARE YOU CAN YOU TRY THIS OUT PLZ? =D
What do the kids get when they accomplish the objective? Food? Money?
I don't have any two classes that are learning the same material... how do I create competition? Split the class down the middle?
A lot of this stuff sounds great in theory but isn't so easy to implement... especially by the teacher alone.
Honestly that's why I was curious if you had any ideas for this. On the level where parents deal with their kids I think it's rather easy to implement, but I find it hard to think about how one could implement this in the actual school.
Basically when I understand the concepts behind most of these "games" correctly it's about offering the group as a whole (to avoid bullying etc.) a benefit as a whole once they reach a certain goal. The goal has to be achievable (too low/high and it kills the motivation) and the benefit has to be something the group wants to obtain. I guess that the framing should be around "I as your authority figure believe that you as a group can achieve this goal" instead of "some of you will achieve it, some won't".
As I see it if the benefit is cool enough the group itself will develop the "competetive" dynamics without further help in that regard. It's kind of a similar basis for any of those group based games, if the good people want their benefit they have to help the weaker ones first. The weaker ones gain a reason beyond the task itself and get offered mostly unconditional help which both contributes to their motivation.
Some random examples I can think of for potential benefits: If the class as a whole achieves an average of x+ in a certain subject they... ...make an field trip every half year (in my old school we had like a full week per year where the teachers could lead kids out on field trips, the people with like history/language classes or similar stuff as majors were kinda lucky and did cool stuff, the math majors usually didn't have much fun. =D) ...get some period without homework assignements. ...they're allowed to leave earlier / come in later at a certain date (probably tricky, I doubt it's possible to make this or anything similar work) ...one or two lessons per month get turned into movie lessons where the class watches subject related movies. (Let's be honest, no one cares what it is - as long as it's not regular classes it's already cool to get it.)
In ALL those cases a class which doesn't hit the set average they would simply have regular classes/homework.
Other things (which would need to have bigger benefits) would be if you put the classes in competition against each other. Thinking of myself back in school (we had about 5-6 classes per year until 11th grade at most) if you would have offered our class that if we beat the others in our average we get a week off we would have begged teachers to help us more. Maybe even for three days. =P ... This class vs class stuff would have to be handled carefully though since I can see a weaker class giving up easily and similar stuff. Maybe there could be done something if all the classes of a grade combined achieve a certain goal and get similar dynamics without the drawbacks.
You think any of this (should probably stick to the one class, one subject idea first) could work and be implementable?
Negative Reinforcement: For most school assignments, and in many cases the final grade calculation, students start out with a perfect score (100%) and are penalized downward. A few early mistakes can have a devastating effect on self-esteem, turning the rest of the semester into an uphill battle against a non-intuitive feedback system (more work does not grant greater rewards, merely less punishment), as well as a low sense of efficacy.
How could most grades be calculated that way ? The only time ever I've seen that was for orthography tests.
Let's say you have graded homework for math or physics. If you make a mistake in calculation or don't write a step you'll lose points. Which is fine. But there's no way to make up for this by considering related problems, generalizing or making an interesting insight.
The goal is to finish a specific task perfectly. If you're a good student almost all of your effort goes towards making sure you avoid silly mistakes. Now, precision is important but is it really the no.1 thing we need to teach to above average math or physics students?
And the whole language of grading is fishy. A single number or letter representing your knowledge of or even talent for a whole area of study. If someone tells me my grade for Linear Algebra is C that's unhelpful and probably a little discouraging. If they give me a list of techniques and concepts I need to brush up on, that's immensely helpful. It's infinitely more useful than the single number and it's less likely to affect my confidence.
On July 06 2012 12:48 r.Evo wrote: In my opinion you need a solid combination of positive and negative reinforcement. School or education in general has a tendency to give too much negative feedback and not enough positive feedback.
A fun example I witnessed in my own behaviour occurs when you compare the "punishment/reward" features in DotA 2 and LoL. In LoL, you can only report players. In DotA 2 you can either report people or you can commend them. The commendations are there for everyone to be seen and have no effect beyond that at the moment. However, personally for me, the chance to be "commended" if I was nice and did well is way more motivating to show that behaviour than the chance to simply "not be reported".
Transferring that example to school the motivation is usually fueled by "get punished for bad grades" and "get not punished for good grades" because those are (usually both by parents and teachers) already expected. To be "good at school" is what's considered the norm - that automatically devalues doing well and makes doing bad demotivating - it shows you're somehow "worse" than others.
The problem with positive reinforcements at school however is that you also have to take the social factors into account. A day off for each A/1 you get in your half year marks? If used badly that kid will be bullied to hell and back because he gets benefits that are very wanted and obvious. Benefits, taking the social circle into account, have to be small, visible for everyone and reinforced by the social structure around them.
On July 06 2012 14:19 Yoshi Kirishima wrote: For example showing grades in class on a wall, maybe with name (usually I think it's with the student's number so you don't know who's who). ... Maybe instead of just showing grades off in 1 list (for a class), also show different areas of the student's grade. Have a ranking for test scores, homework scores, etc. etc. So that even if your overall grade is bad, you could still motivate/show off by doing very well on a test and increasing on rank, or simply having others see that you did so well on the test.
Obviously something like that could make those, who want to remain anonymous and not have others' see their score, feel uncomfortable.. I don't think it would hurt to have those people opt to not have their grades shown on those lists. The rest of the people who have decent or better grades should feel comfortable to have their grades shown, so they can compete with their friends. They could also just share information by word of mouth, but usually there are several cliques per class so a unified ranking of grades could be effective.
Messing with competition and other social mechanics is definitely a problem once students start hitting puberty (speaking from experience as a former summer camp counselor), and would definitely have to be downplayed. One thing mentioned by both the Classrealm creator and in the Extra Credits episode (in the links section) was specifically encouraging cooperative/supportive behavior by using class-wide rewards -- for example, a reward contingent on everyone meeting a certain threshold of performance/good behavior.
The current fundamental problem (that led to products like Classrealm in the first place) is how much work gamification is for individual teachers -- who receive almost no support from either their students or the school administration. The teachers would be held accountable for any exploits, harassment, or unfair situations generated by the students.
Then again, it's not called "gaming the system" for nothing : \
Oh, so it's more like if the class as an entity gets xy points total they get a benefit as whole?
I can definitly see that working, that actually encourages helping out the weaker ones and celebrating the good ones. There's no need however to pack that into a game, can definitly do this in some kind of more subtle way.
Edit: Wow. The more I think about this the more I think it is actually a really, really great concept. It's very similar to those games where you have groups competing against others where the group as a whole has to solve riddles quickly. The people who are the "nerds" in those groups are actually getting celebrated because they benefit the group as a whole. That concept is just great.
Basically it would mean, if class X gets an average of Z or better, they get a cool advantage like having a few hours off or getting to go home earlier on a certain day per month. Suddenly the group as a whole (as long as the goal is still achievable) has a reason to push weaker students and help them out while the good students get positive feedback from the group.
I really, really would like to see how that works in practice. It's kind of a reversal of that class A vs class B experiment abusing the positive parts of the group dynamics.
MICRONESIA WHERE ARE YOU CAN YOU TRY THIS OUT PLZ? =D
What do the kids get when they accomplish the objective? Food? Money?
I don't have any two classes that are learning the same material... how do I create competition? Split the class down the middle?
A lot of this stuff sounds great in theory but isn't so easy to implement... especially by the teacher alone.
Honestly that's why I was curious if you had any ideas for this. On the level where parents deal with their kids I think it's rather easy to implement, but I find it hard to think about how one could implement this in the actual school.
Basically when I understand the concepts behind most of these "games" correctly it's about offering the group as a whole (to avoid bullying etc.) a benefit as a whole once they reach a certain goal. The goal has to be achievable (too low/high and it kills the motivation) and the benefit has to be something the group wants to obtain. I guess that the framing should be around "I as your authority figure believe that you as a group can achieve this goal" instead of "some of you will achieve it, some won't".
As I see it if the benefit is cool enough the group itself will develop the "competetive" dynamics without further help in that regard. It's kind of a similar basis for any of those group based games, if the good people want their benefit they have to help the weaker ones first. The weaker ones gain a reason beyond the task itself and get offered mostly unconditional help which both contributes to their motivation.
Some random examples I can think of for potential benefits: If the class as a whole achieves an average of x+ in a certain subject they... ...make an field trip every half year (in my old school we had like a full week per year where the teachers could lead kids out on field trips, the people with like history/language classes or similar stuff as majors were kinda lucky and did cool stuff, the math majors usually didn't have much fun. =D) ...get some period without homework assignements. ...they're allowed to leave earlier / come in later at a certain date (probably tricky, I doubt it's possible to make this or anything similar work) ...one or two lessons per month get turned into movie lessons where the class watches subject related movies. (Let's be honest, no one cares what it is - as long as it's not regular classes it's already cool to get it.)
In ALL those cases a class which doesn't hit the set average they would simply have regular classes/homework.
Other things (which would need to have bigger benefits) would be if you put the classes in competition against each other. Thinking of myself back in school (we had about 5-6 classes per year until 11th grade at most) if you would have offered our class that if we beat the others in our average we get a week off we would have begged teachers to help us more. Maybe even for three days. =P ... This class vs class stuff would have to be handled carefully though since I can see a weaker class giving up easily and similar stuff. Maybe there could be done something if all the classes of a grade combined achieve a certain goal and get similar dynamics without the drawbacks.
You think any of this (should probably stick to the one class, one subject idea first) could work and be implementable?
PS: My incantations have worked! <3
In my experience, some of that could work some of the time, but most of it won't work most of the time. There are so many issues that will come up if you try to "gamify" school in the ways you suggested that wouldn't even occur to you until you have actually tried some of them (which I have). Your ideas are not entirely without merit, but don't represent sufficient evidence of need for a paradigm shift.