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Gamification and Education

Gamification and Education

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I’ve been hovering on the edges of “gamification” in the realm of education for a while now, sort of constantly on the verge of deep diving into the literature and the projects, but then I seem to be constantly getting dragged away by a million other things. I’ve wanted to be able to say more about it, because it feels very close to my own drives when it comes to tech in higher ed, but it’s markedly different in interesting ways.

I’ve been of two minds about the gamification movement from the start, though I feel under-qualified to actually state an opinion. My feeling about it, from the casual reading I’ve done so far, is that the concept has its heart in the right place in trying to replicate the engagement games engender in a formal learning environment, but that I’m not convinced we’re entirely clear on why games engender that engagement the way they do, or even that it’s one single thing that’s the same factor from game to game. But what do I know; maybe I’m just over-complicating things. I’m not a gamer myself, really, but I’ve been engaged in a pretty significant number of online communities that also exhibit the level of determined commitment that gamers do. If you can remove the game and still see the same behaviour, maybe the key to what we’re looking for isn’t strictly inside the game.

Then I found this:

In a recent blog post speaking out against the term ‘gamification’, [Margaret] Robertson wrote, “What we’re currently terming gamification is in fact the process of taking that thing that is least essential to games and representing it as the core of the experience. 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.”

“Gamification is the wrong word for the right idea. The word for what’s happening at the moment is pointsification. There are things that should be pointsified. There are things that should be gamified. There are things that should be both. There are many, many things that should be neither.” Margaret Robertson

You may be tempted to jump on board and trade your grades in for badges and call it a game. But this simple act doesn’t dramatically change the learner’s experience. Take some time to really understand what makes a good game great. Create a compelling narrative to pull your students through the course. Set up mentoring and collaboration opportunities such as those you encounter in games to enable learners to share what they know. And frequently chime in with feedback. Use those badges to chart progress, but meaningful instructor feedback is what will truly propel the learner forward.

On some level, higher education is already a game. The points are grades, and students are expected to gain as many of them as they can to level up and win. Many games have elements of grinding (where you do dull and not very challenging or inspiring tasks over and over in order to gain a level, set of skills, or gold that will unlock the next segment of the game experience); I suspect grinding is the part of gaming we have most successfully adopted at this point. We give students lots of activities they aren’t particularly engaged in and expect performance on them. That’s how education has worked for a long tim. We have a general motivation problem.

We attribute that motivation problem to all kinds of things; the classes are too large, faculty teaching loads are too high, too many students enter higher education simply for the certification of it rather than any desire to learn. I’m sure all of these things are true, but there are assignments that work in spite of all that, and students who get engaged even if there are 1000 students in the class with them.

Any work in examining motivation in any learning environment, formal, informal, gaming, affinity group of any kind, is valuable in the end to the end, I think. I don’t think there’s one answer here; I suspect there are a million answers.

I should schedule that deep dive now, shouldn’t I.

Hacking Say and Reviving ELIZA Webcast

Hacking Say and Reviving ELIZA Webcast

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Jason and I are doing a webcast on Wednesday, January 14th as the discussion arm of our article, Hacking Say and Reviving ELIZA. The article is our first attempt to consider our prior work in virtual worlds (text-based MOOs) in light of developments like Second Life. We still have a lot more thinking to do on the subject, as it’s a big one; we learned a lot back in the 90s about using virtual worlds in teaching and learning, and in constructing immersive experiences, and we want to bring our knowledge forward in a thoughtful, considered way.

Please feel free to join us to talk about these things. The article is really just a starting point for us, both professionally and as part of this discussion; we’re interested in a lot of topics re: immersion in virtual worlds, the lessons from MOO/MUD/MUSH, the directions we’d like to see virtual worlds heading, discussion of current projects, etc. Second Life is the darling of the moment, but we’re interested in the tools generally, not so much the company specifically, and even discussing what a future education-based virtual world might look like based on what we sense right now. Would there be one, or several, or would every school maintain their own? What’s the right thing? What about informal learning? How do we find the right blend to ensure the richest possible tools and experience?

Want to join us? The webcast is at 6pm EST, and you can find us here.

Blogging in Education

Blogging in Education

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In August, I was invited to come do a quick (about 15 minutes!) talk for new faculty about using blogging as part of teaching. Apparently the feedback was good, so I was invited to come back and do a longer piece on it. There are 40 people signed up, and the talk is today.

Normally talks don’t scare me particularly, because I do love to natter on about topics I’m interested in. (And really, a talk is very much like a blog post…I talk for a while, and then it’s open for others to comment, right?) But for some reason I’m anxious about this talk. Maybe because people signed up for it. They will be expecting things. Can I live up to their expectations? I don’t know.

I have things to say. I think they’re somewhat important things. Somewhat. I even have powerpoint! (Some cited CC flickr images and some power statements, but it’s in ppt!) But still.

The main gist of what I want to get across is something like…well first of, you have to match your tools to your content, your expectations, and your personality. There is no magic bullet technology that will work for everyone, and there’s no point using blogging if you’re not going to use it in a way that suits both the content, the syllabus, and your own style. A given?

I think the other thing I want to get across is the difference between formality and informality. If you want students to do more formal writing, I’m not sure this is the way to do it. Mostly because, in the case of undergrads, formal writing is not a comfortable form. It’s a way of distancing themselves from the material. It’s not honest for them. As they learn to use the tool of formal essay-writing better, it can become more honest, but…for most, not so much. If you want real thinking, really interest and passion and engagement, you have to toss formal essay-writing in blog form out the window. It’s too easy to plagiarize. And writing is good, and you can think of this writing as creating a portfolio of primary sources that can be drawn on later to create formal writing. I’ve been thinking of it in terms of honesty; allow students to be honest. If they don’t understand something and mention it, that will help them later, because they’ll be able to show how they come to understand something in a formal report.

Which leads me to something that bonked me on the head yesterday while reviewing for Learning Inquiry. I read this fantastic article that used some extremely bang-on terminology: productive failure, and unproductive success.

Here’s what I’m currently considering: we tend to reward unproductive success more than anything. If a student walks into a class knowing the subject material, that student will probably do extremely well. If a student spends 3/4ths of the class struggling with the material and getting things wrong, not understanding, struggling with concepts, and then really gets it, that student will probably not do as well. But that student is actually learning, and demonstrating learning. We don’t have an effective way of rewarding real learning.

Which is the key reason why I object to switching out the word “student” with the word “learner”, though I know it’s trying to get at the same idea. We don’t know whether we have “learners” or not, on a grand scale. Often we have a group of already-knowledgeable students who will unproductively get As and we feel good about it the learning experience. How do we measure learning? Real learning? Going from confusion to understanding? How do we even see it when undergrads often don’t even open their mouths in class? Do we really have a “Learning Management System”? Really? How do we really support and reward learning rather than merely unproductive success?

So I think blogging done well, set up with good expectations and with a fostered honesty, can reveal the actual learning going on, and can give students the option of displaying the learning they’re doing. And we can reward it that way. If a student struggles for the first half of the course and demonstrates that struggle, and then suddenly GETS IT, you’ll have evidence of their learning. You can reward that, you can grade them according to how they learned and how articulate they can be about the way in which they learned and why. At the moment we grade them based on whether or not they get it fast enough, for the most part. So you can use these tools to support and encourage productive failure as a means toward productive success. I’m not saying it’s enough to just try. Unproductive failure isn’t the goal either. Failure that builds into understanding is productive.

But the key part, it seems to me, is finding a way to get through to a class about how to use a blog. I’ve been thinking about this. I’m getting better at giving motivational speeches, and this one would be a challenge. I think you have to drop the formality, and encourage honesty. Perhaps a discussion about the wonders of productive failure is important. Or even to explain that formal writing isn’t objective, it’s just a tool for people to channel their confusion and passion in a culturally acceptable way. So let’s screw with what’s culturally expectable. Tell us what you really think. Have you ever heard of these ideas or concepts before? If so, where? Do you think it’s relevant? Why do you think you’re learning this? Do you understand the article? Was it too difficult to understand, the sentences too long and filled with jargon? Say so. Do you find this subject boring? Why? (Do you think political history is boring? Why? Because it seems too distant and filled with names and numbers, and not enough about juicy things like the real details of people’s lives? Valid comment!)

Undergraduate students are doing two things at university (among others): 1) learning content, and 2) learning to speak to faculty in the “right” way through their work, ie, learning formal scholarly communication methods. The second one is the harder one. Students sort of put on a voice they think faculty want to hear (which is where that dreaded word “utilize” comes in; it makes the student sound more formal, more serious; hahaha no it doesn’t). Students are often avoiding the learning part by trying to put on a show with the formal structure and language. So for get it for a second, for the blog part; let them just be honest about what they think. They can shape that into formal communication later.

As I’ve been writing this, Jeremy sent me this article about how students expect a better grade because they “tried really hard”. That’s not what I’m saying. I’m saying: let productive failure be okay in your class. Trying really hard and getting nowhere doesn’t deserve a better grade. You need to succeed to get a good grade, definitely. You have to end up at point B from point A. But how you get there might be different. I’m just saying: let students have a shot at getting there in their own way.

Using blogging to track productive failure isn’t changing the whole structure, after all. It’s just giving students one assignment, just one, where being confused about the subject is okay. If they can build on their failures and come to understand, to turn it into a productive success, just for one assignment, isn’t that a valid part of a well-rounded education?