gamification and teaching

bogwalrus

I am just curious to know if Gamification is practiced much in Irish classrooms?

Here is a quick link for those unsure what it is.

http://www.edudemic.com/25-things-teachers-should-know-about-gamification/


It is proving to be really powerful in the business world and as far as I know from what I have read it seems to work very well in the classroom.


My friend is in his second year teaching and we were talking about offering rewards in the classroom.

An example would be that points are rewarded to students for different things such as high grades, attendance, assertiveness etc. A leader board is created in a subtle manner so that students with difficulty in the subject do not feel stupid (this can be done creatively and there are a few working examples in practice already).


Considering most mobile phone games now use Gameification students should be able to adopt the system with ease.

Any thoughts or maybe experiences using similar methods?

byhookorbycrook

http://missionv.ie/ sadly is no longer running due to lack of funding but was very successful at primary level.

gubbie

In my school in the uk they use it. Rewards can be stickers, sweets, a phone call home or my personal favourite, a postcard home.

I have one girl who actively aims for them, asking what she needs to do I class to get a postcard home.

I've also heard class dojo is great for primary level

bogwalrus

Thank you for your replies. I think the model would work well at primary and secondary levels. It would be great to see a commitment by some teachers to adopt this for a year to see if it increases grades while also reducing other classroom related issues.


My friend started a leader board in his English class. It will be based on memorising Shakespeare quotes. I'll report back on his experiences.

byhookorbycrook

I would use stickers, prizes ,notes home/praise postcards home, certs all of the time, most primary teachers tend to have a lot of stuff like this in their survival kit!!

clartharlear

Reward systems using points, credits, stamps, stickers etc are probably ubiquitous in UK primary and secondary schools. I'd expect that most schools also have a school-wide online points scoring system

I have mixed feelings about the gamification thing. On the pro side, it does encourage focusing on the positive, which can be hard to do.
However, the squeaky wheel gets the grease, and that means that the attention-seekers still seek the attention (but at least maybe for more positive reasons) and the 'grey middle' of the student body still sit under the radar. So the nice, quiet, unassuming, shy ones never rack up the points.

Most importantly, while I see the value in utilising the brain's dopamine-reward system for earning points, I do worry that gamification hides or even destroys the idea of intrinsic benefits in learning. Shouldn't there be some sort of intellectual/social/emotional/spiritual value in everything you teach and they learn? However, sometimes parts of the exam board's syllabus are just s*** and all you want is for them to learn it for the exam. So gamification is like icing a burnt cake in this case.

It's like how performance-related pay can improve performance in repetitive piecework tasks such as on production lines, but it can damage performance in complex multilevel work like teaching.

So I do use educational games, and a couple of different reward and points systems, but I do have concerns that gamification devalues learning and education. I do see immediate short term gains, but I fear medium and long term, the losses will outweigh the gains.

implausible

Ok, I must be the only person who didn't know that using reward systems, points etc was actually called gamification I didn't read this thread before as I thought it was something to do with computers:o

Back on topic, I'd imagine every teacher in the country uses some type of positive reinforcement in his/her classroom, albeit unstructured.

Now, where did I leave my sally rod?

clartharlear

Reward systems are just part of the idea, but a part that impacts my own teaching a lot.

deegs

late to the thread but extrinsic reward systems usually lead to a shallower knowledge transfer albeit a higher interaction rate... depends on what you are trying to achieve!

f3232

clartharlear wrote: »

Reward systems using points, credits, stamps, stickers etc are probably ubiquitous in UK primary and secondary schools. I'd expect that most schools also have a school-wide online points scoring system

I have mixed feelings about the gamification thing. On the pro side, it does encourage focusing on the positive, which can be hard to do.
However, the squeaky wheel gets the grease, and that means that the attention-seekers still seek the attention (but at least maybe for more positive reasons) and the 'grey middle' of the student body still sit under the radar. So the nice, quiet, unassuming, shy ones never rack up the points.

Most importantly, while I see the value in utilising the brain's dopamine-reward system for earning points, I do worry that gamification hides or even destroys the idea of intrinsic benefits in learning. Shouldn't there be some sort of intellectual/social/emotional/spiritual value in everything you teach and they learn? However, sometimes parts of the exam board's syllabus are just s*** and all you want is for them to learn it for the exam. So gamification is like icing a burnt cake in this case.

It's like how performance-related pay can improve performance in repetitive piecework tasks such as on production lines, but it can damage performance in complex multilevel work like teaching.

So I do use educational games, and a couple of different reward and points systems, but I do have concerns that gamification devalues learning and education. I do see immediate short term gains, but I fear medium and long term, the losses will outweigh the gains.

Great post, I especially like bold paragraph.

deegs

Relevant material:
http://mmrg.pbworks.com/f/Ryan,+Deci+00.pdf