The future of learning is...gaming?
How a gamified classroom could help students learn
I was planning to increase my science-based posts anyway, but since the untimely demise of my PC, I guess that’s starting this week! I’ll continue to use this little space here to introduce some newsletters and posts that you might find interesting!
This week, I came across a post on what growth means — the author was talking from the perspective of a business/organization, but some of the thinking can be applied to what you might all be doing at work or right here on Substack as content creators. The first definition in the post, about taking a scientific approach to growth, is one that I try to apply everyday and encourage you all to do the same!
Hello Scientist Gamer!
I've often talked about using games for health and how researchers around the world are studying the health benefits of video games. But we haven't yet explored video games in education and learning. Last week, I briefly mentioned video games and learning in patients with schizophrenia. This week, let's dive deeper into this topic.
Game-based learning started to pop up as journal articles in the 2000s, as researchers started trying to define what it was.1 Although researchers can’t agree on a precise definition of game-based learning, what they can agree on is that play is an important component of why learning with games works.
We all started learning through play. Video games mimic much of what makes playing powerful: curiosity, experimentation, role-playing, and socialization. However, not all games are made equally, and not all can be used for education.
The most common way that games are incorporated into education is through gamification. This involves taking elements of games (like point systems, rewards, and leaderboards) and applying them to learning. For example, getting a badge for an achievement or competing with your friends to get the highest score. Duolingo uses this method with experience points tracked on a weekly leaderboard and badges for significant achievements.
I think gamification is great for changing long-term behaviours like exercising or quitting smoking, but I am less sure about its benefits for retaining information. Instead, serious games that are developed specifically for educational purposes, might have a bigger impact by making the learning experience more memorable. Microsoft Flight Simulator, which helps players learn about the nuances of flying different aircraft from the safety of their gaming room, is one example. Foldit is another example, where players help researchers figure out the structure of proteins.
Some educators have figured out ways to use existing games to teach concepts in science and math to social studies and mental health. Hey Listen Games is a great example of this, using various games to create teachable moments.
All that to say, games can be great for education and learning. Now, let's look at a study that analyzed the effects of a gamified course on student performance.
What the researchers did
The researchers enlisted 22 classes (878 students total) teaching an environmental, social, and governance course across four universities. They randomly assigned them to either a traditional teaching course or a gamified teaching course. The gamified course included elements like points and leaderboards, healthy competition, and badges for reaching milestones.
After the course was completed, the researchers compared test scores between the two groups of students. They also surveyed the students to assess the effect of the course on psychological ownership, self-efficacy, competition, autonomy support, and interactivity. The researchers were curious not only about the effect of the gamified course but the reason behind its effects.
Student gamers had higher test scores
Students in the gamified course performed better — 19 points better — on the tests compared to those in the traditional course. The one thing I wonder about is what this 19 point increase means from the students’ perspective. Was the test out of 100, meaning an almost 20% increase in test scores?
But more importantly, why did students in the gamified course perform better than those in the traditional course?
Students felt like they were in control with gamified learning
I was bored and annoyed with my elementary school education. I had no control over what was being taught, and I was not motivated to learn. That changed in high school and university when I could choose the courses I was interested in. Having control over my learning journey made me more motivated to continue learning.2
The researchers found the same thing after conducting the survey. Students in the gamified course felt a personal connection to and investment in their learning. They felt that they had control over their learning, and that they could tailor their journey according to their own curiosity. All of this contributed to students feeling like they had psychological ownership over their learning.
The enhanced psychological ownership among students in the gamified course then raised the perceived importance of the learning material. Students recognized the value and relevance of what they were learning. It’s unclear exactly how the courses were gamified, but activities like role-playing, if included, could help put the information into perspective.
Why is it important?
Gamification and serious games are often discussed without fully understanding how they might be useful in different contexts. This study adds to the growing body of research addressing how and why gaming works in education.
Understanding the "why" can help determine the best way to incorporate games in a learning setting. If the learning concepts are straightforward, gamification might help increase motivation to learn the material. On the other hand, if the material is complex and could benefit from a gamified representation, building a serious game might be the best approach. If the concepts are already explored in an existing game, playing the game and then discussing it might be the best way forward.
There are benefits and challenges associated with each of those approaches. Gamification may be simple to implement, but it might not help students learn. Serious games can be great for targeting the specific material you want to highlight, but it costs money to develop. Existing games don’t require development, but it may be difficult to find a game that addresses learning goals.
Limitations of the study
As with all scientific studies, it's important to recognize the limitations of this study. One limitation is the small-ish number of analyzed individuals. In the grand scheme of things, 800 people is nothing compared to the total student population of the world. Therefore, it's possible that the effect of gamification won’t be as pronounced when analyzing a bigger population.
Another limitation is that the effects of gamification were studied for only one course. What happens if all subjects were gamified? Is there such a thing as gaming fatigue in learning? Over the course of a year or academic career, will gaming still show the same effects? Is gaming effective only at the moment because of the small number of courses implementing this idea?
Only future studies will tell whether the next evolution in education is gaming.
If you want to read the article for yourself, you can access it for free right here: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0303259
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https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1090277.pdf
I know it is a PDF (usually I wouldn’t do that for safety concerns) but I did download this myself and it was the only publicly available link to the full text for this article about the foundations for game-based learning.
Except for badly taught courses, of course. I failed my genetics course in university; a field of study that I would eventually get my PhD in.
Fun Fact: This War Of Mine is a school lecture in Poland.
Very interesting! I do have my doubts, though. Gamification makes sense for learning rote information. But the 'level up' mindset is contrary to 'mastery', which often requires repeating the same effort over and over across a plateau with no obvious near-term improvement - aka, learning to love the journey, not the destination. I've found that to embrace a mastery mindset, I've had to let go of habits I learned from years of playing games.