Gamification: educational applications and the rise of engagement
- This EdTech article by D. Frank Smith showcases an app designed by a UW-Madison professor to teach campus sustainability through gamification:
One of the app's games lets students practice waste sorting to reinforce good habits in distinguishing waste from recyclable materials. Different objects scroll down the side of the screen on a conveyer belt, and students click and drag to sort them into the proper bins.
Work on the app was funded in part by a Sustainability Innovation in Research and Education (SIRE) grant from the UW Office of Sustainability. It is being designed by the Mobile Learning Incubator (MLI) team at the Madison campus. Sustainable U is the team's follow-up to Waste Eliminators, an interactive, environmental tour of campus which was also created with the help of Middlecamp and two graduate students in 2013, according to a university news release.
- Michael Logarta at GMA News reports on the expansion of homework-helping social platform Brainly to the Phillipines. The article touches on the value of 'play' for students, the challenges of gamifying education, and why playing is the future of learning:
“When lessons are delivered in a game-like manner – that is, interactive, challenging, with instantaneous feedback – students easily remember them,” said Christine Rom, Game Developers’ Association of the Philippines (GDAP) board member and CEO of educational games developer PODD. “If we harness the elements that make these games interesting and integrate them into education, we get the opportunity to enhance the learning process.”
Gamification improves motivation. “By giving students a sense of achievement (through exciting rewards and recognition), students will be encouraged to learn and progress more,” explained Rom.
- Amanda Schneider at HuffPo considers gamification and the shift from "productivity" to "engagement":
In a recent Mashable article Gabe Zichermann, the author of Game-Based Marketing and the CEO of Gamification.co states that one of the reasons for the increase in gamification is that long-standing marketing techniques are now failing. "They're failing because people today are seeking more reward and more engagement from experiences than ever before." Younger generations may be even more in tuned with gaming because they have likely never known a world without computers. Specifically, "Today's youth mandates a more engaging experience. Gamification is required to bring those things into balance, and to make things engaging enough so people will pay attention to them and stay focused on them for a longer period of time."