There seems to be continued confusion about the distinctions between games, gamification, and game based learning. This talk by Sebastian Deterding is now several years old, but it’s as relevant now as it was then. This talk focuses on gamification; what it is, what it isn’t and what is needed for meaningful gamification.
If you are interested in following my course journal, watch for the “Gamification 101” heading.
Also, for more information on gamification, check out my website here.
This is a very well-written post. The advice applies to other breeds besides livestock guardians too!
Source: Predator Friendly Ranching …: Puppy talk and how it relates to LGD
This is Part 18 in my continuing saga of my current iteration of a gamified course.
Most of my students are well on their way. We have spent a lot of time talking about the way the course is organized and the tools we are using. While it may seem we are spending a lot of time on administrative stuff, they are actually learning about shared folders, the nature of URLs, spreadsheets, collaborative documents, email etiquette, and more. All of it is just-in-time learning that has immediate practical application.
The nature of the course design is part of the course content.
If you are interested in following my course journal, watch for the “Gamification 101” heading.
Also, for more information on gamification, check out my website here.
It’s not the badges that are meaningful – it’s what they represent. If the the thing they represent is meaningful then the badge is meaningful. It also helps if the badge is recognized as a form of credential.
Interesting that this comes across my feed in the same week that I get a notice from Michigan State (where I did my Graduate Certificate in Serious Game Design and Research, from Department of Telecommunication, Information Studies and Media) that they are offering badges too. I’ll show them to you when I get them. This also relates to yesterday’s post on how institutions can become gamified – in part by doing exactly this.
While digital badges may sound like overshared gimmicks from the latest trendy game or social network, they have become serious commodities in the world of college credentials.More institutions no
Source: Digital badges hit the big time in higher ed | University Business Magazine
A few weeks ago, I had the pleasure of playing Upper One Games’ Never Alone, or Kisima Injitchuna. It was a relatively simple puzzle-platformer game that on the merits of gameplay doesn’t do anything too drastic from the norm. However, what the game did do incredibly well was teach me something new.
Source: Doing Educational Gaming Right
Source: Unknown (if anyone knows the source of this image, please let me know so I can credit them)
What if all instructors could access the students’ badges (or other credentials). This could ultimately have far-reaching implications for how students earn credit, what kind of work they are required to do in their classes, and more.
I once designed an inquiry-based intro to programming course and in order to give my students as much freedom as possible I started by defining – in detail – what they needed to know at the end of the course. Then I created a big rubric spreadhseet and that became how I tracked their progress.
Aside from ego issues between departments and individual instructors (which are considerable, but not insurmountable) it would be possible to create an institution-wide system that does something similar. It’s all a mater of scale, really. We’d still teach courses, but those courses would now be defined with respect to a degree defined by competencies rather than by courses.
This falls in line with what Charles Reigeluth is talking about with his paradigm shift. I’ve talked about how gamification fits in here, and this idea seems to me like a natural evolution of that. While there are some things that are truly new in gamification, much of it isn’t, but it is a handy, unifying concept that brings together a bunch of design ideas that have been kicking about separately.
Until now.
There are a whole host of ways that this can be implemented. I’ll talk more about those in other posts (when I’m not rushing to get ready for class).
Katrin Becker (2004) Reconciling a Traditional Syllabus with an Inquiry-Based Introductory Course The Journal of Computing Science in Colleges Volume 20, Number 2, December 2004, pp 28-37 Consortium for Computing Science in Colleges Northwest Conference, October 8-9 2004, Salem, Oregon
If you are interested in following my course journal, watch for the “Gamification 101” heading.
Also, for more information on gamification, check out my website here.
This is Part 17 in my continuing saga of my current iteration of a gamified course.
As I’ve said before, current course management systems don’t have the flexibility required to accommodate a gamified design such as mine (here and here). Currently I, using Google Sheets, which works pretty well, but the set-up is quite onerous – I have to create a master grading sheet by importing information from each student using importrange. So far I’ve been OK, but you can only do 50 of these in any given spreadsheet, so if I ever have more than 50 students, I’ll need to think of another way. Plus, I need to handle changes in the class list (adds and drops) myself. It would really make a big difference if all of this could be done automatically.
You seen the student quest logs and scorecards. Here’s an example of what the master grade book looks like.
Each line is a different student. Each column on the right side represents their score for the quest category.
So, what do we need in a gamified grading application? Note that NOWHERE does it say anything about percentages. It is assumed that the total of all the XP will add up to more than is needed for a perfect score. This description will probably evolve as I gain more experience, but here’s what I have so far:
That’s all I have for now. I will add more to this list as I think of it. Check back from time to time to see how this evolves.
If you are interested in following my course journal, watch for the “Gamification 101” heading.
Also, for more information on gamification, check out my website here.
I’m really glad that some people are finally starting to realize the value that introverts bring to the table (The Power of Introverts: A Manifesto for Quiet Brilliance; The Benefits of Being an Introvert; ).
Many of those who advertise gamification as the latest panacea for ‘driving’ engagement from customers and employees alike seem to fail to realize (or simply don’t care) that many of the elements of gamification they are touting involve EXTRINSIC motivation. These kinds of strategies cater to extroverts and can actually drive introverts away.
I really wonder how often it happens that some new educational fad gets implemented without ever really considering the effect it will have. I really doubt that most of them are actually tested or researched before some TED talk or some Ed “guru” tells us that this is what we MUST do.
The education classes I took when I was doing my PhD were all heavily tipped towards collaboration and in-class group activities. There really was little recognition of any other valid way to learn (after all they were teaching us the “right way” weren’t they?), and very little accommodation for different styles.
It’s worth considering.
Which of the current “trends” in education cater to one type of person in favour of another?
Collaboration? Flipped Classrooms? Discussions? Badges?
What might the long-term effects be of that? In other words, what might the long term effects be of disengaging introverts while catering to extroverts? It’s one thing to employ a teaching strategy because it will teach them something, but it’s another entirely to do it because you think it’s “better” for them.
