Gamification is a methodology that seeks to increase the motivation of participants a priori in non-playful environments and thus achieve better results , that is, to apply game techniques in non-playful environments. The objectives may be to better absorb some knowledge, motivate students, promote learning, improve some skill, or reward specific actions, among many other objectives.
How many hours a day can children spend playing video games, board games or card games? In order to keep them entertained in the same way in the classroom, the concept of educational gamification was born, through which we create gamification tools in the educational field, and thus, they learn by playing.
A bit of history: What is gamification?
The evolution of games and, above all, the way of playing, changed radically with the appearance and consolidation of the video game industry from the 1980s onwards . Although the origin of gamification is located in the business sector, its evolution deviated towards other areas. Specifically, the leap into the world of education seems to be due to Professor Malone, who developed a study of the motivation of online games using the concepts of gamification during the teaching-learning process.
Gamification is having enormous success in training methodologies due to its playful nature, since in addition to increasing motivation, it facilitates the internalization of concepts.
However, the concept as we understand it today dates back to 2003. It is a loan from the English word gamification , a term coined by the British Nick Pelling, designer and programmer of business software, who spread this term to name a reality observed by him, according to which the "culture of the game" was a kind of revolution that was reprogramming society .
But it was in 2010 and 2011 that famous video game designers Cunningham and Zichermann widely disseminated the idea of gamification at conferences and conventions, stressing that this term also highlighted the “importance of the playful experience”, that is, the need to transfer the concentration, fun and emotions experienced by the player to the real world.
What are the learning techniques of educational gamification?
For the correct application of gamification as an educational strategy, a series of mechanical and dynamic techniques are used , extrapolated from game dynamics. Depending on each of them, games will be created that respond to different gamification strategies.
The learning technique based on game mechanics.
It is the way of rewarding the participant based on the objectives achieved. For example:
Accumulation of points
A value is assigned to certain actions and they accumulate as they are carried out.
Level scaling
Levels are defined that the user must overcome.
Obtaining prizes or gifts
They are delivered as objectives are met.
Rankings
Depending on the points obtained or objectives achieved, you will move up or down in a ranking.
Challenges
Competitions between users to win prizes
Missions or challenges
To solve or overcome a challenge or objective, alone or as a team.
The dynamic learning technique
For its part, it refers to the user's own motivation to play and lawyer email addresses continue to achieve their goals.
This gives rise to a system with several conditions:
Reward
With which a well-deserved benefit is obtained
Status
Which establishes a socially valued hierarchical level
Achievement
Result that brings personal improvement or satisfaction
Competition
It involves the search to try to be better
Infographic with examples of dynamic techniques
Depending on the dynamics pursued, some techniques should be exploited more than others. The idea of educational gamification is not to create a game but to use the scoring-reward-objective systems that normally make up these games. In addition, the advantages of ICT can be used to create a dynamic that leads to creating a gamification process in the classroom , and at all educational levels.
ICT and educational gamification
New platforms such as tablets and computers have been entering the classroom since the 1980s and there are many experiences that prove their educational value, but there are still many teachers who are reluctant to use these gamification tools.
What matters is what we do with technology, not the technology itself. Essentially, active learning proposes that the learner has control over the activity and has his or her resources at his or her disposal to overcome a challenge and, often, produce something new.
Thus, ICTs allow us to create a series of digital or even physical artifacts : from presentations, scores and mind maps to apps and robots, blogs and podcasts, among many other possibilities.
In short, educational gamification and ICT change the meaning of the game and the use of new technologies in formal learning contexts . The learner, normally socialized in the game and in the use of ICT in his closest environment, thus rediscovers in the school context the keys that he already knows from his social practices outside the classroom and applies them normally to the new task of learning through the structures and dynamics of the game and the possibilities that the computer and the Internet open in the classroom.