Prezi: The Plan to Gamify My Class
After taking this
course on gamification I set out a plan to begin to gamify my class. Being that I am a technology teacher I
thought that it would be a bit easier than many other courses that students take,
but it still presents several challenges and a lot of work. The more I look at how to add choices to my
lessons, rewards, badges, leader boards, gamer clans and other aspects of
gamification the more I realized how much more fun and engaging my class could
be (Landers, 2015)
I have always
believed that students that are not learning and seem uninterested in class are
not having fun. “Fun is the emotional
response to learning”(Stangra, 2017) No
fun, no rewards, no choices on lessons, lead to lower grades.
A teacher that
likes to hear themselves speak all class and constantly gives lectures with or
without PowerPoint’s may eventually have discipline problems and falling grades
when the students start to tune out the teacher. I like to think of myself as a coach or a
facilitator that guides students along in their journey to learn. I realized fairly quickly in teaching that
after 5-10 minutes of showing a student something or lecturing them they tune
out. It was hard for me to step back at
first, but it really has made my job easier when I became more of a
facilitator. Is traditional teaching
dead? It is in my class. Bring on
gamification!
By looking at the behaviorism
theory it is easy to see how to entice students to learn by using beneficial
activities (Landers 2015) . Why would a
teacher give an assignment that most of the kids were going to hate? Personalization of units I found was the key,
where students will have a choice of several smaller projects of what the class
is studying, that will lead to a final culminating project for each unit. It appears that Alverez has mastered this
approach in several interactive websites that make the lessons look like quests
(Alverez, 2015). Getting my class to
this point would require a lot of creativity and website work but it would be
worth it in a future version of a more gamified class.
Other theories of
how gamification can improve learning include the fun theory and expectancy
theories like the goal setting theory.
If students are having fun they will be more engaged and excited in
learning. If they have a goal of getting
on the leader board then they have something to strive for.
The typing warmup
that my students do for the first 10 minutes of class is already gamified. There are online points and badges that they
can earn and even an online leaderboard.
If they make it through a certain amount of lessons they get a typing
ninja game battling a Yeti. To take this
a step further I started putting up a leader board in my class now so students
and visitors can see their standing. I
decided that only the first 50 out of about 180 students that I teach will be
on the leaderboard as I do not want to embarrass students that are way behind.
My units that I
teach in technology are less gamified and I wanted to take a hard look at how
to better gamify my units especially the writing unit I teach. One of the things I got from the class I took
was to give students more choices and make their learning more personal. I usually give the students 3 essays and I
decided which ones they could do. If I
gave them a choice it may be a bit more work, but it would help to personalize
their learning.
If I set the
writing unit up as a quest based on points with a culminating project I could
give them more choices, but still have them do a similar thing (Alverez, 2015). I have 16 essay lessons that are already
written that I have decided could easily be put on a website. I have laid out a plan in the Prezi
info-graphic I made. Students would
choose 3 of the essays to do and then have a culminating project at the
end. By giving students a choice in what
they are writing about will make it more interesting and fun for the
students. Throw in a few badges and
points from Edmodo when I grade it and we could easily be on our way to
gamifying that unit. If students get
ahead or need to be rewarded they could go to fun learning games like typing
games, or learning games.
Another unit that
I took a look at in my Prezi was the coding unit. In order to gamify my coding unit I would
give the students several coding projects and have them pick from them. Depending on what projects they choose they
would eventually get enough points to get to the final project. For this assignment I would look at creating
gamer clans or leagues where students could help each other out to complete
more complex coding projects (Gamification in Education, 2017) I could even have them code a little game,
but this is way beyond simply gamifying a classroom. As students progress they would be rewarded
with badges from Edmodo and fun learning games.
All the theories
like behaviorism, goal setting, and personalization are key to setting up a
good gamified classroom. The goal to
gamification is engaged students having fun and and learning. I took a poll of one of my classes and placed
the data in my Prezi. In the poll my
students overwhelming said they liked having more choices on assignments, and
they liked badges and other awards for completing classwork. Although I expected these answers I noticed
that my students split a poll question when it came to their typing where many
of them preferred typing games over badges and leaderboards.
In my Prezi poll I
also talked to five teachers about gamification and they seemed very positive
about the concept. They said that
personalization would probably increase the quality of the students work and
engagement in the classroom. When asked
if they would switch to a gamified model from a traditional teaching model many
said they probably would not, because it is to much work, they have lessons
that work, and there class is not suited for it. Many said they have a curriculum that does
not call for choices, but many said they like the gamification idea and may
incorporate some of the ideas into their class.
As for my class it
will continue to become more gamified. I
am in the process of building out a gamified website that looks like a quest,
but it will not be ready until next semester.
Overall I want my class to be educational yet fun and by gamifying parts
of my class I can get closer to that goal.
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