Gamification

Gamification of learning activities is a strategy that "rewards players (learners) who accomplish desired tasks.  Types of rewards include points, achievement badges or levels, the filling of a progress bar, and providing the user with virtual currency" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamification).

 A colleague introduced me to gamification this week.  He works in a virtual environment where they are having great success.  He said that if he returned to a "regular" school he would gamify everything.  He would create student "houses", and give out rewards for individual achievement and for groups achievement.  He would give out helper points.  It wasn't, however, the use of badges and banners that got me excited (blogger's note:  I am still scarred from a keynote by Alfie Kohn, around the time of the release of his book Punishment by Rewards: The Trouble with Gold Stars, Incentive Plans, A's. Praise and Other Bribes), but his observations that led him to this strategy.  You see, he was watching his grandson play video games and noticed the following things:

• Why will a child try a video game over and over, even though they continue to fail?
• During this "trying" they are engaged, and not a behaviour problem.
• They like the badges and rewards that they earn on their quests, and feel great success when the complete a task and "level up".
• They work hard learning how to win, and in the process they learn how to lose.
• Games have built in cheats, and the kids work incredibly hard researching and learning the cheat codes to do better in the game, all the while learning new things.

This reminds me of another Principal who looked at the skateboarder culture.  He watched kids try a trick over and over again for hundreds of hours.  He tried and tried and tried again, and in the process scraped skins off his body, bruised his muscles and broke his bones.  He tried despite a 100% failure rate until he finally achieved success.  Then, he started the process over with a new trick.

Hmmmm...

...and here at school, kids fail once and then never want to do it again...

They fail once, and the "are done".

Somehow, we have to tap into these classic examples of intrinsic motivation.  Somehow, we have to allow the process to be more engaging to the students than it is to us.  Somehow, we have make learning something that makes failure worthwhile, so that students will come back over and over and over again until they master the tasks that we have set out for them. 

Somehow, we have to make "the learning" something that they want to do. 

Thoughts?  I'd appreciate anything to add to my own new thinking to this topic.