danger! gamification!

Gamification

Daniel Livingstone

University of the West ofScotland

@UWSGamesTech@dlivingstone

Choose your own adventure

A school head tells you that they are going to invest heavily in gamification to improve learning outcomes. What do you say?1. That’s a great idea because…2. Hmm, you need to think about this because

…3. That’s a terrible idea because…

That’s a great idea because…

• Gamification is a great way to promote engagement

• Gamification can help promote deeper learning

• Gamification is really hot right now

• Continue

Think about this because…

• Gamification is good, but not always easy• There are lots of different ways you can add

gamification elements, and it depends on what you are trying to do

• Gamification might not be suitable for all types of learning

• Continue

That’s a terrible idea because…

• Gamification is a silly gimmick• Learning is not supposed to be fun• You don’t seem to know just how vague that

statement is… so you clearly don’t know enough about this to begin

• Continue

Gamification…

Everyone is talking about it!

Well, almost…

Game of Thrones counts doesn’t it?

‘Pointsification’

“Points and badges have no closer a relationship to games than they do to websites and fitness apps and loyalty cards. They’re great tools for communicating progress and acknowledging effort, but neither points nor badges in any way constitute a game.”- Margaret Robertsonhttp://www.hideandseek.net/2010/10/06/cant-play-wont-play/

Marking Progress

Driving Behaviours

1. Create a cipher device2. Encrypt with a substitution cipher3. Decode a Playfair cipher

4. Decode a message in Base64

Motivation

• Intrinsic– The thing is its own reward

• Extrinsic– External reward for doing the thing– Implication is that the thing itself is perhaps not

worth doing?

GOOD

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Women working/graduating in programming/computer op-erators as % of total. More details at lg.dlivingstone.com

Workforce Ratio Graduation Ratio

Gamification is Dangerous because…

• There is no agreed definition – and some vocal disagreement– We don’t control the term: it is used more in marketing

than education

• Inappropriate rewards might reduce desired motivation

• Making good games is hard: at least as hard as making good learning experiences– Games that appeal to everyone are even more difficult

• The research is mostly ‘to be completed’ – lots of preliminary results, little hard empirical data

But…Rewards systems really can workGames and simulations can provide effective and authentic learning environments for skills acquisition

E.g. current work at UWS on teaching research methods to nursing students: making an subject that is typically abstract and obscure into something concrete and directly applicable

… or get the students to make the games. It doesn’t matter much whether the games are good or not, they learn by making & by trying to explain

Any questions?

@dlivingstonehttp://www.slideshare.net/dlivingstone/@UWSGamesTech

More

• http://www.ulqcl.com/kappnotes/index.php/2013/04/when-to-use-gamification/#.UYiyvyCYu8Q.twitter

• http://edudemic.com/2013/05/teachers-guide-to-using-badges-in-your-classroom/

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamification#History