from Terry Haik
This article was originally written in 2011 and recently updated in 2025.
Gamification is simply the application of a game-like mechanics to non-game “things”.
The big idea here is to encourage the desired behavior. In this way, “gamification” is the installation of mechanics or systems that recognize and reward behavior. Through increased visibility of the nuance, the documentation of progress and the remuneration of a seemingly insignificant (but critical) behavior can be achieved by a specific result.
As it encourages internal motivation through an externally created set of circumstances, gamification sits on the uncomfortable intersection of internal and external motivation.
While for a lot of connotation of the term suggests video games, video games are just one example of the concept of gamification in action – and only insofar as they are many games. Video games are interactive, digital sequences that have been gammified. Otherwise, they would simply be interactive digital experiences.
In fact, life itself is “gamified” – through informal social competition (“maintaining Jouneszs”), to Buzz Extreme Couloners receive comparison of receipts, cryptocurrencies and comparing the 401K portfolio, gaining access to “platinum” or “black” credit cards. Even sticking a piston pin on the map of any traveling destination you have ever visited is a form of “gamification”. Like the boys’ badges. You make a game of something that is not.
Almost all social media are deeply gammified – in ease with which friends can be “collected”, status updates are often used to update the progress or activities throughout your real life day or the “as” dopamine and identity buttons when you like others. Share a photo or update and watch the roller “like”, each of them as a point in a game.
See also The difference between gamification and the game -based training
Misunderstanding
The current problem surrounding the idea is less for the definition and more for the tone.
Reducing the “gamification” process to something simply entertaining, stupid or minor is a major misunderstanding of gamification as a process. For years, classrooms have been gammified. The assessments of the letters are indeed the first subjective assessments of the knowledge of knowledge, but once they are handed over to the hands of the students, they become components of the game, transmitted around as a proof of the fulfillment of some task or to achieve some desired goal (mastering the standard, fulfilling the requirements of the assignment, etc.).
Here is the criteria that are used to establish quality conditions, now to shoot it and I will decide how well I think you did.
The average point of the assessment may be the most visible example of school gamification. Knowledge is evaluated with numerous tasks and tests, and the degree of letters is given as a type of trophy – as well as large trophies, FS trophies of the wrong appearance, but the trophies are still. Class ranking? This is a competition for gathering as much as possible, trying to do purely what is inherently messy: learning.
Consider how much “3.2 GPa” misses a student, their interests, their history, progress and their potential. The degrees of letters are the attempt to quantify understanding and/or effectiveness in the hope of hiding the ridiculous complexity of the learning process. By the degree of the letter (against Alternatives to the degrees in letters), productivity becomes obviously synchronized in otherwise asynchronous situations. Different learners with different teachers, through different tasks, completed instead of different styles of learning, with the huge influence of incredibly different privacy – through this environment of discrepancy, the assessment of the letters is trying to be the only thing that is universal.
But at a huge price.
Actually the power of The assessment of letters has become a powerful than training itself For many, subordinating the notions of knowledge, discovery and self -awareness. It is assumed that the degrees of letters and test results are a reliable quantitative determination of knowledge, but anyone who has ever appreciated that the test knows the danger of this assumption. Using a letter to describe simple, singular execution can be acceptable, but when the consequences go to longer-term ideas about “knowledge” and “understanding”, these topics gravitate dangerously to their own value.
Other examples of gamification? Student of the month, most likely (insert a verb here), How much praise Significations, “inscription” in sports and countless other actions and icons. In the past, however, there were more students than there were visible awards – more individual paths than the opportunity to recognize these paths. More learners than spots on the podium. The rest are sent to a vocational school.
The nuance of teaching and training
Research Regarding the motivation of students, illustrates that the motivation of the students is largely guided by the inherent desire to achieve goals:
“The Fifth Family of Social -Cognitive Constructs That Has Has Been A Major Focus of Research on Student Motivation Is Goals and Goal Orientation. There is a Great Deal of Research On DIFERENT Directing Human Behavior (Austin & Vancouver, 1996), But in Research on Student Motivation, There Have Been Two Main Programs of Research. Settings, Whereas the Other Has focused on the nature of the goals of achievement or orientations of goals. The nature of the goals They serve to motivate and direct behavior in the context of the classroom. “
What is the “nature” of the goals of the student in your class? (Academic) Good evaluation? (Personally) Your praise? (Social) peers pressure? Gamification allows wide areas of content (such as English in English) with few implementation measures (alphanumeric symbols) to be divided into more detailed-and-and-skills. “Writing”, for example, can become an “expert and self -invention application of the” revision “step of the writing process.” Natural growth of learning over time.
There are attempts to correct this: each student receives a trophy, registration of passage/failure, social promotion instead of failed letters and countless others. But gamification can go so much more for those who want to think carefully about it. This idea is nowhere to be powerful than in the ability to document and treat a diverse shade of learners. Instead of offering only a handful of slots for the “highest performers” to occupy, within the gamification, the ability to recognize the deeply personalized nature of learning lies. Not all students want trophies or gold stickers or be trapped on the head for “studying hard”.
Recently, students want – and need – recognizing their unique nature: previous experience, interests, cognitive and creative gifts and critical interdependence with those around them. This leads to self-knowledge and authentic location with partner set and community that again offers a larger, important social context.
Gaming system-if well designs the ability to make transparent not only success and failure, recognitions and demo, but every step in the learning process that the designer of gamification chooses to emphasize.
Any missed leakage, peers cooperate with a revised sentence, reviewed history, every step of the scientific process and long-standing resolution, every original analogy, a strictly designed thesis for the thesis, or the study of the press factors, one time, these ideas and more can be emphasized.
In the “perfect” model of training, no gamification would be needed. But until we have reached this point, it is an ideal fit in highly academic educational circles, where students are expected to master huge piles of non-authentic content and are constantly measured because of their “skills”.
Forward movement
There are as many ways to “success” as there are individual personalities; This is a topic of 21Holy Century. Gaming allows not only to recognize these ideas, but also a convincing validation for truly personalized training. In order to continue to move to healthy communities and useful global interdependence, we will not simply recognize “different styles of learning” or semi-hearted reward of “students with low achievements”, but rather to adjust the offensive tradition of too much vision for academic success, based on strict standards, based on strict standards, based on strict standards and instructions, based on strict standards, based on strict standards and instructions.
Through the creative application of the mechanics of the games-related innovations in the curriculum and the instructions design-this is possible, but the discussion must go beyond the video games and badges to the concepts of empowering trainees and almost enhance the definition of academic success.
This article was reissued by an 2011 article by Terry Haik
