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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?
Is it just me, or is gamification incredibly condescending?
As a future teacher I'm already working on a gamification system for my future classroom. I was inspired after watching this awesome edition of Extra Credits on PATV http://www.penny-arcade.com/patv/episode/gamifying-education which is definitely worth watching.
Because flunking people who don't care about learning is preferable to pandering to them?
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
Has there been any efficacy studies with respect to the workplace gamification of employee training? Not just efficacy in the employee being "trained" with the content, but actual outcomes based on the employee absorption of the training? I know that in some workplaces where I've been, being given time for training is considered a "perk" and the lower-performing (and perversely the ultra-effective) folks don't to go.
The real issue is that unlike a game, your status is a pale reflection of reality - many people in real life are very "stats oriented" while others view measurement of stats about their progress as limiting and depressing, and not reflective of their true worth (to the organization, as a person, etc). At one point, I vacillate between one extreme and another.
"I am not a number... I am a free man" sayeth the Prisoner.
Perhaps we should integrate this training into project and management methodologies such that training really reflects what you've actually done, and then try to "improve" absorption of the training by gamification.
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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.
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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.
Okay two main problems with the audio:
The interviewer breathes loudly into the microphone while the interviewee is talking. It's kind of gross.
Secondly, when the two different scenes are mixed together (interview and in-class video) the speaking in one distracts from the other.
I mention this because it is often very effective to teach with games, and the students will be very engaged, but at least in the US we are still very focused on testable outcomes that can be efficiently graded. Therefore we have to build certain skills beyond the content into students. Such as reading and answering the question you are asked. Understanding that not every level, or question, needs to be completed. That there are are rules and processes, but sometimes a question can be asking to you modify those proceses to achieve an efficient product.
Also, there is a big problem in the classroom of looking like tea ching is going, not only for outside observers but also to the students. The students have to be focused on the learning. We have a bunch of games, computer simulations, online assistants that make learning much easier and fun that it used to be. However, either because the students are not focused on the details or because the teachers does not connect the games to the content, learning does not go on. This is a big, and rational, criticism of this teaching process and it is something that must be a focus if one is going to use this process.
A large part of learning has always occurred outside the classroom and what we call 'advanced students' often are able to learn despite what happens in the classroom. What makes a good teacher is the ability to connect with 66% of the population that makes up the average student. Games will be one way to do this, but is not going to make a bad teacher good, or alone save an average student.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
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.
"how are you going to continually assess students to make sure the class is learning, and not just following patterns or playing a game."
What do you know about learning? "Those who can't, teach." Teachers try to validate themselves by requiring students to pay attention to them, or else!
I prefer Socrates's method: teach for free, and don't give exams. If you end up in a state of aporia, that's okay. As Confucius says in The Analects, Book II Chapter XVII: "Yu, shall I teach you what knowledge is? When you know a thing, to hold that you know it; and when you do not know a thing, to allow that you do not know it;-- this is knowledge."
Instead of obsessing over whether a student is learning or not, and spending time trying to evaluate others, just concentrate on transferring knowledge; if you want to give assignments, ask the students to figure out something you don't know how to do yet. Work with the students to further knowledge, instead of acting as their adversary and withholding knowledge "with the closed fist of the teacher who keeps some things back" (Maha-parinibbana Sutta: Last Days of the Buddha, Part 2, Verse 32).
We can have a scoring system where they ask questions about the lectures afterwards and award a lettered badge...
we should call them ...
EXAMS! /facepalm
I only had one boring lecturer in my 4 year BS/EE, I -loved- lecture, especially physics, thermo, AI, and mechanics.
Whine whine whine.
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college for college for all at the cost of hands / trades is bad over all.
* There is lot's thing that don't need 2-4-6++ years of pure class room.
* Not all people do good in areas where you need do good on cramming based tests vs more hands / open book tests.
* Parts of the tech fields move way to fast to fit well into the college time tables.
* Lot's of college don't have as many teachers who have done real hands on work that the tech / Community Colleges have.
* We need more stuff like the german dual education system.
* The higher levels of college are geared to staying in academia.
* CS are some colleges is high level theory that has big skills gaps with other parts of the IT field.
And it is not really relevant here as we are specifically talking about engagement and grading. It does not matter if students are paying attention to a teacher or box. The key is that student engagement is the issue. Likewise, it does not matter whether grade are added up, or awarded based on tests, or level completed. What matter is that students are graded based on the content and skills they can demonstrate, not how they can manipulate the system to earn points.
This is where the games come it. They can hold the attention of the student. But a game is something that is an adversarial process, where information is held back, and must be unlocked by completed often unrelated tasks. The experience of the student in that a game is often separated from the knowledge and skill is exactly what causes it be difficult to use. For instance, I once used a game that was developed by people who were very smart and very familiar with teaching, learning, children, and assessment. Points were added and levels gained as the student when through the process. Some motivated students did very well. But many students just played the game to win, that is simply figured out what the game rules were, played by those rules, and then exited without significant learning.
Which is why simply saying that counting up, that rewarding the class for success, that being positive and engaging student self esteeem, is not sufficient and has not been sufficient since these things were in wide use 50 years ago, 100 years ago, I mean maybe even 10000 years ago. And what we are talking about is not educating a elite, but educating everyone. And to do that a wide array of methods must be used, not just the favorite or the one currently in fashion.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
I have been working in this industry for nearly a decade, and as far as I can tell, the entire concept is complete bullshit.
It's basically a circle-jerk for hacks who fancy themselves as revolutionary designers or educators. The reality is that there are no substantive results to speak of with regard to an improved learning experience. Nobody has managed to (legitimately) quantify the efficacy of game-based learning in any convincing way.
Still, I will keep going for my slice of the hype-pie before it all disappears.
"how are you going to continually assess students to make sure the class is learning, and not just following patterns or playing a game."
What do you know about learning? "Those who can't, teach." Teachers try to validate themselves by requiring students to pay attention to them, or else!
And those who can't teach criticise those who can. I'm an English professor in a European university and the reason I want my students to pay attention to me is that I really don't want to have to fail students at the end of the year. I'm trying to teach them useful things, and I've got to select what to teach based on a broad variety in levels (the ones into online games are pretty capable, but many of the others have next-to-no ability) so that I can test them all to see if they are capable of surviving in the next guy's class, based on what he's going to teach them.
However much we would like to measure each student's progress against themselves (and almost every teacher would like to do this) the reality is that we cannot teach every student individually, so we need to get them to a shared level so that they can continue to be taught together. If 15 of my first-years manage to learn 15 different subsets of the grammar and vocabulary of English, and I pass them all based on their individual knowledge and not on gaps in the knowledge we would want them to have, there will be no single lesson that the second-year professor can give that will be useful to all of them.
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You apparently didn't watch the video. One of the biggest points, and easiest to pull off with minimal cash money ... simply count scores UP instead of DOWN.
That's part of what makes video games fun/addictive. You see a goal, and every step you make works towards that goal.
Positive/additive marking as opposed to negative/subtractive marking is not a new idea -- it has been proposed many times before. In fact, it is the core principle behind most language aptitude rating now. This is not what gamification is about.
It is one element of gamification, and as with all educational philosophies, one or two good points are held up to champion the entire philosophy.
The key defining factor in gamification isn't the additive marking, though: the key factor is the "achievements" -- that crack-like substance that people add to mindless, boring games to convince us to stick at them long enough for us to generate useful advertiser income. Think about it -- we've probably all played tons of games that aren't "fun", but we just need to finish it. What does that say about teaching? It implies that learning is boring -- it is not "Learning" is fun -- what is not fun is "not learning". So the core principle of gamification is to that the content is far less important than the presentation, and that is extremely dangerous.
It feeds directly into teachers' ego-saving strategies -- "it's not me, it's the student", "it's not me, it's the uncomfortable chairs", "it's not me, it's the colour of the paint" (yes, as soon as a study suggests that green aids concentration, you'll have teachers calling for the school to be repainted) -- and ultimately distracts teachers from looking critically at their material and their classroom skills. The best teachers are constantly refining their lessons based on classroom reactions.
The worst teachers don't refine -- they simply blame an external factor, such as teaching methodology. They jump on the next bandwagon that rolls past and discover it hasn't solved their problems at all. So they blame the system and wait for the next bandwagon. (ad nauseum -- or should that be "ad pension-um"?)
The last thing that education needs is a fad that actively pulls teachers away from thinking about the learning content and diverts their attention to the "paintjob".
The Penny Arcade version is an exercise in naive frivolity: "you can fly" as an alternative to a grade? What ever happened to teaching kids to appreciate knowledge for its own sake and for its own applications? The example task ( finding the quickest path between two subjects ) was of very little pedagogical value. Yes, it is of some pedagogical value, but the idea of bonus points for the "winner" hyperinflates its importance to the student. In effect, you end up marking for students' time, not for what they've learned. Furthermore, the notion of having a winner at all goes against the notion of grading the student as an individual.
And it is not a truism that competition motivates. Those kids lacking agency? They have a pessimistic outlook. They don't expect to win. So they don't take part in the race. I've personally found myself in the "not taking part" category -- mostly when it comes to selling raffle tickets or the like. The person who sells the most raffle tickets gets a gift voucher or something. I know I'm not going to win (others have large church groups, book groups, lots of friends and family locally etc) -- so what happens? I don't even bother taking a single book of tickets. If there had been no incentive, I would have sold one or two. But what's the point of entering the competition if you're not going to win? So what they're proposing is not a cure for alienation, but yet another cause for it. OK, it's alienation for different people, but it's not a cure-all -- it's simply robbing Peter to pay Paul.
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And even the achievement thing isn't that new either. I'm sure most of you will have heard of the scouts or the girl guides. "Merit badges" as the US calls them (they're just "badges" or "scout/guide badges" as far as I was concerned as a kid growing up in Scotland) motivate kids by giving them proof of their achievements... and that's where the games got the idea from.
But there's a big difference between scout badges and game achievements: the scout badges all are proof that a particular useful skill has been mastered by the learner, but many achievements in video games are frivolities. "Killed 1000 enemies with the rail gun" doesn't reward skill, just persistence. The Portal Steam achievements include falling a ridiculously long distance, which means falling between two portals multiple times. Difficult to do without drifting slightly and landing accidently. The level of control required to do it is very high, but it's not a genuinely useful game skill.
The Scottish education system attempted to build assessment based on the scout-like idea of unitary skills -- the ScotVEC modules built up to an NVQ or GNVQ. Guess what? It didn't work. Skills are interdependent and linked, and the school is still restricted by timetabling constraints.
But most gamification isn't even a rehash of the "module" system (which is still alive and well anyway and damning many educational establishments to mediocrity), it's the game achievements. It's frivolities and non-curricular goals, and the model presented on Penny Arcade is one of the worst I've seen.
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What is a Game? In my book:
(I) a well defined Goal
(II) a set of Strategies which each player may choose from
(III) Rules for translating the Strategies into a Score (measuring progress to the Goal).
It seems to me that any education system with grades is - in a sense - Gamified. We have been tallying points for centuries. The only difference is to what extent the Rules are clearly defined.
It is however, in my experience some of the most valuable lessons I have learned are:
(I) the Rules in Life are not at all obvious (if they exist at all)
(II) Goals in Life are also not always clear - and even if they are, they frequently change.
Thusly in contrast to the Game stand Play. When in Play - there are no rules, and no clearly defined goals (except having a good time). Those who Play form their Goals, their Rules and their Strategies as they go along. They can also change them as they go. While this is not necessarily the approach to education - it IS the way things go in the real world.