Gamification

Coming into this topic, I thought there was not much more to it than having an alternate to the regular class setting. But there actually appears to be a lot of science involved in games. It comes down to the negative stereotypes we have for game playing and how it is considered a waste of time or for leisure.  After looking at the forum for this section though one gets a slightly different picture of the situation.

I believe that they mentioned that we engage in 3 billion hours of gaming every week and that this may not be a bad thing. One of the regrets of most dying people is that they did not enjoy themselves as much as they should have. Well gaming could have helped, but most people feel guilty about it. Yet, is pleasure and thinking a guilty pursuit?

To be sure, there are some people that are fixated on games and can spend an unhealthy amount of time pursuing anti-social gaming experiences. But even gaming can be social if it is on line.  It is more the content of the game that should be addressed rather than gaming per say.

Some other benefits of gaming that are not noticeable at first are how we deal with learning techniques. Many people avoid learning environments or work because they do not wish to fail. In many cases, the idea of success through failure is not a favourable idea in the work environment. Yet, there is no real problem with learning from mistakes in games. In fact it can be quiet enjoyable, which is not the case in real life. The idea of taking a test until you get the answer right appears to be more effective than just getting wrong answers. This comes from the idea that we learn more from taking tests than we do from studying for them. This in turn has health benefits due to lower stress and is a motivational tool for engagement.

Of course there is also the aspect of instant feedback in gaming that is not always available in education or working life. If you started a proposal for a new project, and found out that it was rubbish immediately, then you could start a new one right away, and continue until you got it right. Of course there are some other factors involved, but usually feedback from a report or project in education has a gap of time. And the moment of creativity and inspiration is lost with that gap. As well, multiple failures rarely make a negative impression in games, but they are disastrous in education and work. This is one of the reasons that people engage in games so much, because they know with enough game time there is a reward of achievement, which is not so in education or work with a failure in the way.

There were some very good game sites that were talked about in the forum, and I must admit, I did not know most of them. However, choosing the right game for your subject was a bit trickier. Yes, there are some for my area of teaching, but the development is better in some of the other subjects. There were specializations in VR and simulators, and even avatar worlds in which to play them. I preferred the low tech versions of the gamification, even though I teach IT. I did a digital project on a game in fact.

Of course there is a break from the traditional approach to learning with games. But is this such a bad idea? If people enjoy the game and it is a social, educational experience, removed from negative connotations of failure, then I think it might be a winner. The object is to find the game for the lesson.