Professor Cliff Lampe Talks About Gamification in Academia (Video)

Professor Lampe is using gamification in his 200-student lecture classes to make them more interesting. He says big-class lectures can often be as boring for the professor as they are for the students. A little bit of game-type action can spice things up and make classes more interesting. Near the end of the video he points out that gamification is becoming popular for employee training in private enterprise, so why not use the concept in universities and other educational institutions?

Comments

Why not use gamification?

[SirGarlon]

why not use the concept in universities and other educational institutions?

Because flunking people who don't care about learning is preferable to pandering to them?

Re:Why not use gamification?

[Missing.Matter]

Yes this. This time a thousand. This gamification concept is completely asinine. If you are going to a university but you can't be bothered enough to pay attention and actually engage yourself in your own education, even if the material is dull, then just save us all a lot of trouble and stay home. No one is forcing you to go to college.

And to think of the complete arrogance, that you have this amazing opportunity, a once in a lifetime chance to educate yourself about the world, a chance that people around the world would kill to have, to be in your shoes, and you can't bring yourself to pay attention at a lecture because it's not WoW enough for you? If this is you, drop out immediately, and make room for someone who actually wants an education. Sickening.

Re:Why not use gamification?

[omnichad]

I'm not sure if I agree. Part of a topic being engaging or not is having it be presented in a way that shows its importance. My favorite class in high school was a history class where the teacher used role-playing to show just why certain decisions were made. Even if it was done for the wrong reasons I think it could still have a positive effect. Even as someone who would pay attention anyway, having an entire class engaged presents far more perspectives than being the only interested student.

Re:Why not use gamification?

[Pentium100]

Except that some parts of this are because of human psychology. I remember one professor saying that you need to lecture no more than 15 minutes at a time, then tell a joke or something otherwise everyone will fall asleep (or just will not learn anything, even though they tried to pay attention to what is being said). Yes, sometimes, the topic is so interesting you can listen for the 1.5 hours, but most of the time you will forget 99% of what was said after the first 15-30 minutes.

As for

If you are going to a university but you can't be bothered enough to pay attention and actually engage yourself in your own education, even if the material is dull, then just save us all a lot of trouble and stay home.

this can be used to justify not having any lectures at all. Anyone sufficiently motivated should just read the relevant books and learn, the professors just needs to give the list of the books to read and then grade the exam/papers.

Why are you opposed to things that make life easier? I mean if gamifying education leads to better educated people, why not do it? If using a wheelbarrow makes it easier/faster to transport snow/dirt/etc short distances, why not use it?

Re:Why not use gamification?

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

Why are you opposed to things that make life easier? I mean if gamifying education leads to better educated people, why not do it? If using a wheelbarrow makes it easier/faster to transport snow/dirt/etc short distances, why not use it?

I've been thinking about this sort of question in the bigger picture. What set me down the path was the political observation that as a party republicans are anti-gay except for individuals like Cheney who have a gay child, the party is also pro-torture except for individuals who have actually been tortured like McCain. So I've been trying to figure out if there is a rule that explains such things instead of just trying to score political points.

What I've come up with is this: People like to create their own "personal" rules for how members of society should behave - generally these rules are simple, even natural, to follow for the person who makes them up. Gay marriage is an easy one - straight people have no interest in getting gay married. It is a rule that is natural for them to follow so they have little understanding of what it is like to be on the other side of that rule. A more trivial example came from the husband of a good friend of mine - he forbid their pre-teen daughter from chewing gum. Not for any health reasons, simply because he thought people who chewed gum looked stupid. Of course he didn't like to chew gum himself so he saw no value in it and came up with this rule that didn't cost him anything.

I see the same thing here - chances are the OP is someone for whom traditional educational methods worked pretty well. That makes it easy for him to endorse the current system - it worked for him, it should work for anyone. Anyone for whom it doesn't work must be defective, lazy, wants something for nothing, etc.

Looking back over my life, I can see how I've made up a bunch of similar rules about both trivial and important things. Those rules haven't really helped me, they just gave me a reason to look down on other people who didn't deserve it. In some cases even to dismiss their humanity. In the long run all it did was make me miss opportunities that were right in front of me. So now I try to question my own assumptions about how people should act, and when they aren't directly hurting anyone I make a conscious effort to accept them rather than disparage them.

Fun

[Hatta]

It's no longer fun once someone forces you to do it. Then it just becomes insulting. Doubly so if you already know what they're trying to convey and will be penalized for poor performance at the game despite mastery of the material.

Boring?

[Missing.Matter]

Honestly, if I'm paying $500 - $1000 *per lecture*, I'm going to sit and pay attention no matter how boring the material or the professor is. I realize that some professors or subjects are dull beyond comprehension, but you're actually *paying* to be there so sit up and listen. Get a good night's rest, read the material before coming to class, engage yourself in the discussion (or if there is no discussion, engage yourself in an internal discussion with questions).... no need to dress up like cartoon characters to make the class interesting like we're teaching 3rd graders with uncontrollable ADD. This is college. These are (ostensibly) adults. Give me a break.

Re:I've always hated gamification

[Hatta]

It's not just you. From The Simpsons season 3:

Principle Skinner: Oh, licking envelopes can be fun! All you have to do is make a game of it.
Bart: What kind of game?
Principle Skinner: Well, for example, you could see how many you could lick in an hour, then try to break that record.
Bart: Sounds like a pretty crappy game to me.
Principle Skinner: Yes, well... Get started.

If the Simpsons were making fun of your idea 20 years ago, you might not want to build a career on it.

It's about effective teaching

[Okian Warrior]

Compare a course where you would retain 30% of the content with a course where you would retain 70% of the same content: which would you choose?

Everyone whining about "pandering to the unmotivated" is missing the point: the current class/lecture model started over a thousand years ago and is not optimized for learning. In this century we now know much more about the neurological underpinnings of how people learn, so it makes sense that we should try to optimize the process.

College (or an online course, or work-related training) should be as effective as possible. Some lecturers have this figured out, but most don't.

Stanford is considered a hard school not because the material is difficult, but because it's presented in a way that's hard to learn. Only the brightest and most motivated students can thrive in that situation, which helps to build the "best and brightest" reputation. The reputation comes not from quality of education, but difficulty of education.

(Check out the online videos for Probabilistic Graphical Models by Dr. Daphne Koller at Stanford. Alternately, check out her book on the subject. The book is largely unreadable, and the videos are dreadfully obtuse. Her class at Stanford is well known as a weeder.)

One great aspect of the ongoing MOOC revolution is that everyone is competing on an open field. Instructors using more effective techniques will be perceived as better teachers while the "old-school, cannot change, it's always worked for me" crowd will be left in the dust.

Gamification is a technique for more effective teaching.

Re:It's about effective teaching

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry, but I have to disagree with this. As someone who attends a liberal arts college, I hear all the time about how awesome it is that we have good instructors who present the material clearly and unpretentiously.

The truth of the matter is that my courses cover significantly less material that the courses taken by my friends at Stanford and MIT. It's no wonder that our instruction is "better" -- our instructors are spending the same amount of time on roughly half the content!

Furthermore, this approach tends toward a very "applied" style in which "jargon" is avoided in favor of ideas. Practically, this often means that the more difficult problem sets are abandoned (it's all just jargon and escalation, right?) in favor of the easier problem sets. You may retain more information when this approach is used, but -- from personal experience -- you don't learn how to think more clearly and deeply (or even more quickly.) A more practical implication is that I don't understand conversations between people in my field (industry people OR researchers) because while I "understand" the "ideas", I don't have the necessary language to know what's being discussed.

Now, I use MIT's Open Courseware courses in addition to going to lectures.

Also, please note that this isn't "good school envy" or some form of angst/anger at my alma mater. I've enjoyed my undergraduate experience, and through independent studies I've had the opportunity to engage (on my own) with some very exciting subjects at a deep level. Unfortunately, I can't say my core coursework taught me much of anything.