Gamification Sucks... - How to Improve Gamification - Extra Credits
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- Опубліковано 14 кві 2020
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We've talked about gamification before on this channel, but let's dig into some more. Gamification can feel like a huge drag, but that's usually because designers focus exclusively on extrinsic rewards. But how can you incorporate intrinsic rewards as well as extrinsic? What would that look like?
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We already have an RPG system for group projects:
1. Nothing
2. Nothing
3. Wrote the title
4. Carries entire team
Beep Beep Lettuce 420 I’m three or four depending on who’s in my party
Always 4, always 4, why am I the only one who does his work we are learning how to be teachers!
I’m usually 1 or 2! 😎
D5dizzler not really something to be proud of
Im number 5
...presuming we do everything that he says...
...damn would class be awkward for non-RPG-player students...
I agree, but it doesn't have to be so RPG-centred. Maybe don't use words such as "paladins" and "xp" in order to make it more universal.
Sucks for them :V
It's even worse than trying to come up with an engaging game session for RPG-players, with the best laid plans falling apart at the first point of contact. Pupils are often uncooperative, and since you're dealing with certain facts that have to be established, you're not as flexible as a GM might be in similar circumstances.
Then you just have to lower the RPG dimension while still keeping the things you want to include!
While it will still be the system you wanted to use, it will look less weird to people not used to it
"You are a cleric main!"
"A.. a what?.."
"Oh, no, forget about It, i meant that.. you know a lot of things about religions and philosophy."
"Oh.. o-ok.."
Just renaming the things students do to sound like a videogame will get you to the front page of r/fellowkids pretty quickly. You need to put actual thought into things - like the "adventuring party" example - rather than just relabeling them to seem "in touch."
3:23 In the pre-release days of World of Warcraft, Blizzard added a penalty on experience gain for playing too long, basically to encourage them to go outside once in a while. Players HATED it. In the end, instead of ditching the system in favor of something else, Blizzard turned it upside-down and called the initial experience rate a "rested bonus" and the reduced rate became the "default." This went over much better with the players. The actual numbers were pretty much the same.
I had a few individual teachers who did this when I was in school (high school class of 2013), but as far as I know it still hasn't taken off. Imagine the class syllabus framing grades as "you need to accrue 900 points by the end of the year to get an A" instead of the far more common "every bad grade you get will mean you need to do more and more work to catch up." In my experience, offering a bonus to encourage desired outcomes is way more motivating than threatening consequences for the opposite.
The obvious drawback being that you're probably going to see way more people like me: "what's the absolute minimum amount of work I can do and still get a B+?"
This plus some other fun WoW dev war stories: www.usgamer.net/articles/how-world-of-warcraft-was-made-the-inside-story
EC already did an episode on this
@@magica3526 Wait, which one was that? Can you find the link?
How was this created 21 hours ago when the video was uploaded a few minutes ago? (as of this comment)
Haven't had a lot of experience with teachers who did this except on a smaller scale, but I have a friend who just graduated in cybersecurity who took a class with that system. They had all these assignments to do, with a certain amount of points they would get you for solving the problem. It was on a weekly basis, but you could go back and do previous weeks' works. So yeah, I found that a really interesting approach. Granted, the coursework was super hard so it was still stressful and took them a ton of time to do, but you could always catch up. They had this ranking thing where you could see everyone else's scores, too, so you had some sense of competition. Whether or not that's the best idea I'm not sure...but it was interesting, nonetheless
Gamification ≠ fun
You can throw in as many incentives and rewards as you like but unless you can package the coursework in an engaging and interesting way; It's still going to suck.
Closet thing to a fun game I've played in class is Kahoot!, and even that only works when used sparingly.
In my experience it's about fully embracing the gamification, if a course is set up and designed to be a set of engaging challenges, not all necessarily direct school work, and if most of the students are on board with the idea. It can go very far to make school way better, both in terms of learning and in terms of just being there.
Gamification reminds me of the skinner box mechanics used in mobile games. They make you feel compelled to the tasks... But not necessarily engaged.
Fricking love kahoot
Try Quiziz my dude, it's got a longer timer and insanely powerful powerups that, when used correctly, can boost you from 8th to 1st in 4 questions
That's the deal. You have to find the little places where it can be fun. One thing I actually tried which I think has paid dividends is in tests I'll toss in a blue shell question where if the lower percent of my students can get it right, I'll automatically lower the curve of the grade for the class. I don't tell them what it is (it's usually the key benchmark I'm teaching) but little easter eggs like that work
As a teacher I appreciate the effort of seeing how gamification can help but reality is far from what you described. You made several assumptions that are simply not true or just over simplified the situation.
As a student... most of the scenarios he described wouldn't turn out as the video suggests. Maybe if everyone was into video games and RPG's, but the general student populace would likely just brush it off as some dumb game created by an adult who "doesn't get it".
Like what?
YUP but this channel is infotainment not academic, otherwise theyd link casestudy, sources, resources, etc.
Went to Gencon 2018 and Classcraft was presenting. You may want to look into that for a more streamlined approach to classroom gamification
This is a very brief look. There's gamification that works but you gotta find it. And it's basically hammered in with you have to literally go big or go home with it. You can't really half measure it
Juan Carlos Durán Saladén Would be nice if you named those
This still looks like the wrong angle. You stumble into the actual thing teachers should focus on: their students as individuals.
The problem is, they're not given the resources to. Anywhere.
This, got so many teachers among my friends and all say this.
What might work is having someone outside the school system develop the framework for creating this RPG-style system. Have real teachers consult and test it. Then license it to school systems for direct use in their classrooms.
I'm an Australian teacher. His desert quest example is only possible in primary schools.
That and his exam example isn't allowable based on how the curriculum works.
Teaching strategies are all over the place (gamification) , but implementing some things are restricted by the system, not the teacher.
This is what my mother, who is a second grade teacher, says.
I understand that Finland is trying to fix that problem, but is running into the problem that seeing students as individuals requires more time spent per student, which requires smaller groups, more teachers, more schoolrooms and bigger schools, which is not a problem if you can double the budget too. Which is not really possible anywhere.
As I have understood, it works better in individual level, but total scores are actually going down. Best students end up with the least guidance, as the teacher doesnt have the time.
Here's one: Replay untill you win. Mess up an assignment or test? Get a mixed up version that covers the same subject and have another go. No more fear of failure to hold you back. Also having endless practice problems to grind would be the best way to really learn a skill.
Horde mode education? I approve this message.
I agree that this is the most key part of gamifying education that is needed but also the hardest to do. From what I see as an educator the major issue is not a technical problem although there is often only so many good questions for some subjects and if the questions are hand graded that would be a logistical nightmare. The real issues is that for exams retaking them over and over again will be viewed as guessing and therefore any grade eared will be viewed with suspicion. This would be such a major change to how education works and I don't think it could overcome inertia. All of the gamification I have seen is just reskinning normal education. I don't think we could get the stakeholders on board. Accreditation agencies will likely not accredit fully gamified classes. Employers will likely view them as inferior to the traditional style. There will be calls by politicians for added high stakes testing to give a "real" grade. Also, students view anything that is not lecture as not really teaching.
Also, setting up a truly gamified class an insanely hard for the teacher.
But to make sure people are still putting in effort. Maybe have their final score go by down by a fourth of a point each time.
My school allows retakes of tests but often there’s some kind of thing attached to it. Either if you do well on the retake the teacher averages the performance so the first test still effects your grade, or the retake is harder, or you need to throughly correct your test and show you know why you didn’t get the answer correct (I like the last one compared to the others) and I think you can only retake once.
@@golembrine9933 If you have randomized questions for each test, why penalize?
There is one thing gamification has truly succeeded in. Mythology and history. By simply name dropping important myths and historical figures some games have made learning about the actual myths and people far easier, and thats not even to mention games that borrow directly from history
I love using historical game settings (or even some fictional ones) to teach history and mythology.
See also: Tangential Learning - ua-cam.com/video/rlQrTHrwyxQ/v-deo.html
I got interested in history because of AoE II
I started getting into history through flash games (mud and blood & 1066) and later on total war games!
@@Andreych95 Age of Mythology too. Then Fate capitalized on the history nerds.
4:42
CLASS roles in RPGs?
I HAVE ACHIEVED *PUNS*
I think you've fundamentally misunderstood how most people actually behave in groups for schoolwork, which is to attempt to shirk responsibility as much as possible without getting in trouble. The intrinsic reward of working together only works if working together is actually enjoyable to the people involved and for school assignments that's rarely the case. Education isn't always fun and relying on the kind of motivation that gets people to play games to motivate them to do the hard work of learning boring but necessary things is a recipe for disaster
In games, one of the reasons groups work is because you all have the shared goal of having fun playing the game. In the classroom, you cannot rely on a shared goal as a motivator.
I feel there's a fundamental problem on how people approach gamification. It's not actually a solution to a problem but a framework to understand them. You can surely work out different motivations using gamification (making students feel they're "cheating the system", using skinner boxes, shifting the reward/punishment balance, etc.) and even if you find several students (or even entire courses) for which those won't work, it would still work very similarly to the current system. It's a very low bar given how outdated teaching is in lots of schools.
This is unfortunately true. Unlike what is said in the video, where "every student will want to study to help," I would see people leaning on their more capable teammates, while still getting all the benefit
I've had professors try your suggestions for fixing group work. Somehow, the terrible original way works better for everyone involved.
Simple and straight forward is better than confusing students
I just worker on a group project on how teachers can uses videogames to teach. There's a program called Quest to Learn that uses videogames to teach students.
The thing is, games need to be designed well. We can all agree that giving kids a soccer ball and telling them to go nuts won't teach cooperation. You need a coach trained well to teach kids teamwork and cooperation using sports. Teachers need to be trained how to use games as a medium for learning.
Additionally, flow theory tells us that a game needs:
- intrinsic motivation
- immediate feedback
- appropriate challenge level
So gamification needs to consider these things for the game to really engage students.
Weird thing is that they had some of this figured out back in the 90's. Anyone remember Math Blaster? I grew up with some really good educational games, and then those ideas just evaporated.
Or fastt math
Typing Tutor. Got 30 WPM as a 12 year old kid on that program as a touch typist.
RecoverShield fastt math wasnt that great in retrospect
Math blaster was fun!
I remember those games. I played them allot in elementary school (both at school and at home) and then played one briefly again in 8th grade (2008). I also played games like reading blaster and logical journey of the zoombinis. Learning can be fun (if done right and often enough of course), but the status quo says no to that logic unfortunately.
4:57 I could definitely see some people slacking off and letting the "smart kid" answer more questions. The worst part of group projects is when you see others slack off.
It's training for real life.
When nobody wants to do anything, then I just give them a task, if I'm still the only doing stuff, I just declare myself as a separate team.
@@Mekalor i work retail and i endorse this message
@@m.a.t.a.s I am REALLY late but this is a message I 100% agree with
One party member giving everyone points reminds me a lot of the houses in Harry Potter where a member could get points or detract points for the entire house. :)
Cool. I wonder if the the trio of heroes could work like RPG party. I thought of how houses would work. I even thought of the deathly hallow items they get at high levels. Harry is the heroic one. He is the hero of the story. He leaps in adventure and does the right thing. So Harry would be the warrior. This is someone that charges into battle and tanks for the team. Gryffindors in general have a brave and bold nature. So they would be well suited for the warrior class. Harry does have a sneaky side too. He likes to sneak around the castle and break the rules. This makes Harry a lot like a rogue. Rogue sneak around and strinke hard. Slytherins are good at cunning and sneaking. So they are well suited to be rogues. Harry almost got sorted into Slytherin in the first year, and then he worried about it in the second year. I am used to having four classes. However there are only three characters in the trio. So Harry gets two. He has warrior as the main one, and rogue as a secondary one. If there was one class, I would drop, it would be the rogue. It is just another damage dealer, like the mage. The deathly hallow for Harry is the invisibility cloak. The main reason is that he actually owns that through the whole series. He gets it on Christmas during the first year. Another reason is that the invisibility of the cloak is just like the stealth of a rogue. Becoming invisible is very good for sneaking. Hermione is the smart one. She studies a lot. She knows so much about the magic of the Wizarding World. She can perform it very well. All three of these guys are magicians, but Hermione is by far the best magician. So Hermione would be the mage. This is someone that casts speels, and does damage for the team. Ravenclaws are also good at study and intellect. So they would be good at the mage class. Hermione even said that she almost got sorted into Ravenclaw. The deathly hallow for Hermione is the elder wand. It is the most powerful wand, and so it fits the mage class. Oh man. If Hermione had the elder wand she would have beaten up a lot of death eaters. It never comes up tough. Ron is tricky. He is downplayed a bit in the movies. I think of him as the friendly one. Ron is a very good friend to Harry. They are very nice together. Ron also has a nice family. They provide a welcoming place for Harry to stay during the summer breaks. Ron also knows wizard culture more than the other two, because he was the only one from a wizarding household. So I think Ron fits the priest class. Priests have a kind nature, and they support thier other teammates. They are the healers. If Ron needs to be powered up in the story, maybe healing magic would work. Hufflepuffs are also kind and freindly. So they would also be good at priests. Ron would fit in that house pretty well, but it never comes up. All three member are technically Gryffondors. However each one has some personality qualities that fit in other houses. I think it is a major way to tell the characters apart in terms of personality. The deathly Hallow for Ron is the resurrection stone. Priests have resurection as one of their healing powers. It is a powerful ultamite healing ability. If Ron becomes the healer of the group, than the resurection stone would make a powerful asset. It can bring people from the dead, which is just like the resurection powers of a priest.
Excellent way to start a school war
Quests could easily be Harry Potter themed.
This is common practice in UK schools since way before the 90s.
I would definitely join gryffindor just to get those extra points for no reason
Party system would never work, there's always a surplus of DPS in relation to Tanks and Supports.
I honestly do not see how any of the presented suggestions here would ever survive an actual classroom. Social connections play a -huge- role in the lives of students and its highly unlikely that they will just break or ignore the system. Some students dont care about the outcome of their classes and I doubt those would add to the 'feel good' moments you're trying to create in groups.
Overall I like the idea of making things more fun and interactive - its hard to disagree with that statement - but I think the ideas would need a lot more refinement before they get brought anywhere close to an actual classroom.
Yes and no, you as a teacher need to create an environment where this kind of social structure can work. The ability of teachers to do that depends a lot on standards and administrative support. The problems aren't with the ideas themselves but with the pedagogical framework we currently have. You can't just say "kids won't participate" and assume that's the biggest issue.
@@analytixna6610
I agree, In my class everyone is willing to work; but some teachers just don't provide nor create the correct tools or space to work without it being overly tedious, while others do.
I think the best thing to take away is the idea of it being more active, since the rpg thing would look like pandering. I don't think it's a good idea, i think they should think about doing this without trying to imitate games
I think that the system must be structured in such a way that they negate Household conditions, and "Parties" must be entirely optional and voluntary.
You have to find a way to create the buy-in first. And a lot of that is pedagogical in nature and reliant on the teacher. You have to create the environment to work
It sounds like you're suggesting adding a narrative behind everything students learn. This would require teachers to not just be good teachers, but also be good writers. In short, requiring a ton more work from the teacher's side to be as effective as you suggest. Anything short, and these suggestions are little more than fancy word problems. The idea of reworking the grading system, however, might hold some value.
Getting points if just one person of the group answers correctly? Bad idea. Everyone in the group will just push the work to the smart kid. And when said smart kid refuses to answer (yet again), they may even get angry at him/her.
^^^ This. Group work in a classroom, like in a game, works best when everyone is around the same "Level", so to speak, with different specializations. Sometimes teammates are ok with carrying the party, but not for every mission.
Agreed. Maybe this will work better if a student can't answer twice in a row?
@@katepeterson5478 also note DO NOT put the smart kid with the lazy kid or"i don't care about this class" kid everytime the smart or hardworking kid has to do the majority or all of the work OR has to push and push the other kid to do work like every 5 minuets
@@commenturthegreat2915 I actually really like that idea. From the engagement perspective anyway. One problem I would be concerned with is how the smart kids would always be with other smart kids and no one wants to be paired with someone who can't answer the question. Ideally everyone in the team would push each other to learn and be prepared. The smartest kid would have to be held back and answer questions the rest of the team doesn't know.
The actual solution is to have tests that are stuctured to favor disparate interests and skills where the one "smart" kid isn't pushed into this situation. It's a problem of assessment and not the idea itself.
I can already see a flaw in the party group. If everyone uses their own skills they're good at, how will other "characters" grow in these fields they're lacking?
I took a class on Theories of Learning as an elective during my Master's work. I did a paper on gamification. What I found in the literature was that gamification is rarely studied in a formal way - double blind tests with careful recording of data. The studies that do exist are extremely uneven in their results, but tend to say that there is little to no overall statistically significant benefit to gamification in an educational environment.
BUT when you did deeper, it turns out that the greatest results were seen in studies where students had the option to choose a gamified method or a traditional method. You see, no one was defining what constituted a "game."
I tracked down an excellent definition in the literature but the firstpart of that definition is that a game is an activity you choose to do. If you are required to play something that looks like a game, it's still an assignment that looks like a game. The gamified elements appear to be gimmicks that don't fool anyone.
There is anecdotal evidence that gamification apps you CHOOSE to use are effective, but it hasn't been properly studied with results published in professional literature.
I am summarizing a lot, if you would like a copy of the paper, let me know.
I’m working on gamifying the read-between-the-lines literary analysis that’s on the SAT as a personal project. I think that the idea works best when you try and find the fun that already exists in the subject matter, rather than trying to apply generically fun game things onto the subject matter. It’s like how Papers Please was able to make freaking bureaucracy engaging, they found the engagement that was already there and focused their game on that.
I used to be a student like you, then I took an essay to the knee.
Ooh... paper cuts. Those are nasty things. Especially on the knees! ;)
Underrated comment
Now I see why I always play rogue-ish characters in multiplayer games - so I can avoid group projects and stealth away.
The issue with this concept it it assumes all the “players” at at the same “level”, which is just not the case. Any use in the classroom ends up being a team carry every time. “Players” won’t care whether their “party” succeeds or not, only if they personally do, and if they have a pc ally that’s like three levels above them to do all the work, why would they bother doing anything themselves. And even if they tried to help, they still can’t contribute evenly
“Computers have trouble measuring fist bumps... *FOR NOW* “
I played a boxing VR title in which you had to bump the fists of the AI opponent to start the match. It's getting there.
I died laughing when I heard that line
My ecology course in college does something called "team-based learning," which uses a lot of these concepts in an optimal way. Of course, this is in college, where you assume everyone in the class wants to learn
Extra: "Everyone hates exams"
Me: Speak for yourself. I'll take an exam over homework or *shudder* essays any day of the week.
The goal shouldn't be to make real life like games per se- the real goal, though kids might get excited by game-like references, is to use game design and psychological knowledge to make students feel rewarded and see the progress they make in understanding the world.
That one person who frequently plays actual rpg games: Goes home and rages about teammates being scrubs
I'm a teacher student, graduating later this year, and from my experience teachers (in my country at least) hate extrinsic rewards because they're not useful to help the students improve.
I've been trying to make engaging educational games (I worked at Riot Games for 6 years), and, keeping academic curriculum while staying fun is one of the hardest things I ever tried :(
It's largely because we need to rework standards and curriculum to actually be worth something. Right now most standards are paint-by-numbers facts that's need to be learned and learning is broader than that
@@analytixna6610 I think looking at puzzle games and math as a possible starting point. Math is less about memorizing facts and more about learning new tools and using those tools to solve problems. Introduce those new tools the way a game like Portal 2 would introduce a new gameplay mechanic like the gels, light bridges, lasers, etc. The problems are like the various test chambers, allowing the player to simultaneously explore the idea freely and encourage them to utilize that idea in novel ways to solve the puzzle.
I wish these concepts were used more to enrich our lives and less to manipulate Amazon workers into competing with each other in a job that already treats them like subhuman garbage.
I really hope we can see better gamification in the future; it's something that has so much great potential
I hope so too. I don't envision a growing engagement divide between "work" and "leisure" ending well for anyone involved.
(Also despite what my elders tell me, there's no fundamental law of the universe that says "work" is required to be droll. Would be cool if we can figure that out within my lifetime.)
How did you leave this comment 19 hours ago when the video came out a minute ago
I figure there's more potential in looking at how players learn to play games. Some games like Portal manage to silently teach the player how to play along the way. Others like Homeworld, Eve and Minecraft are for some reason compelling enough that players will read manuals and reference materials to figure out how to play more effectively.
@@takatamiyagawa5688 i think it comes down to challenge level when i played home world the tutorial gave me just enough to feel like i could win and the next mission forced me to expend enough resources that made me treasure the rest a good way to translate this is give students a high points relatively easy introductory assignment and then mostly tiny ones the rest of the term with some moderate sized ones thrown in, tell them the point total for the course but not what each assignment is worth until after grading, making all the work seem important
Ah yes a type of communal system whereby 1 student does the work while the others ride their success. A+ material.
When I was in elementary school... omfg 25 years ago... gamification wasn't even a 'thing' but they still used it.
You got 'trophies' (kinda... points) for everything positive you did. Tutoring someone voluntarily, after school, perfect attendance each week, an A on your exam or all homework for a week. Once you got so many points, you got to go to the computer lab and play Oregon Trail, and Mario Teaches typing and a few other games for ANY class you wanted to.
Additionally, they gave points, for reading any book, out of the library. More points, depending on how long or advanced it was. At the end of the year, prizes were awarded to everyone who participated, and the top student got a new game console, or concert tickets... stuff like that. Big prizes, but in a school of 1000, where only 5 of those are given out, not so much. I read soooo many more books in elementary and jr high, than I did in high school, just because I wanted the nerd-bragging-rights.
I know some people who don't have to attend classes to be A+ level, so xp for attendance wouldn't be that fair for the students in class when the OP character can beat the final boss alone.
this sounds fun
but its an absolute nightmare to keep track of
especially for younger kids
@Extra Credits
I'm writing a paper on the potential "stock" games, games the average joe can get at their local game merchant, in education. Would you mind if I used this video as a popular source in that paper?
Just fyi, try @ing them on twitter if you dont get a response here. I cant guarantee anything, but ive also used them as a source in a paper before and they were really cool about it!
Email them
Habatica attempted to use this to help people feel motivated to complete basic tasks, but then I joined a guild that accidentally found an exp exploit, which broke the leveling up system, which made me give up on the artificial rewards system
For the record, the exploit was
Mages can fill Mana bars of all other guildies, which glitched so that all members were getting overfilled Mana , and then warriors who could cast exp buffs for the guild ended up casting more than the usual buffs plus all buffs kept stacking and the stacking got so high than when I clicked a tiny basic daily quest, the exp given shot me from lvl one to Max level, which. The entire guild was panicking because they didn't realize they were breaking the game and were trying to figure out how member actions could change to unbreak it, but you can't unlevel a character, and I gave up before finding out if they found a new solution
Last suggestion of rewarding the class if anyone knows the answer would yield no results: students would simply wait for the best student to answer. Remember: students are humans and humans are lazy af.
I think gamification sucks for different reasons: It's condescending and manipulative. Sure, the context of schools is probably quite benign, but people want to use it everywhere. To turn us into "good consumers". To manipulate our behavior to whatever the people building the system want it to be. The only reason why I'm not worried about it is that they're all incompetent at it.
Swedish teacher here, working with kids in the 13 - 18 age span.
In most countries, all of the extrinsic rewards you mentioned are illegal, as you're making the grading system vary from school to school and maybe even from teacher to teacher. Some of the intrinsic rewards can work, but should probably be completely digital "educational games" with teaching guides to make sure they're efficient in the classroom.
Games are so much more that just rewards and so are gamification. Why not focus more about interactive learning in gamification. And exploration! What would happen if...? User experience and good design for learning?
Y'all are the reason I am trying to learn game design and I just want to say thank you!
I'm looking forward to your film series!
As for myself, I would find the extrinsic rewards as something to mess with instead of learn from.
It's that faux fun that those badges and superficial awards just makes me puke inside a little bit every time.
The intrinsic side though is worth more then all the diamonds. The actual participation and questing (but instead of questing, its called actually learning.)
Demonstrations and simulations I could make where I could take chances, make mistakes. THOSE were the moments where I could make the connections how the mumbo jumbo applies to different situations.
I think gamificafion is a great way how to explain teaching to people. But making learning a full on game is gonna defeat the point. Cuz actual learning is the original game.
Same reason why I love RPG's, every game has its own flair on the same design, which means every new game is a different but similar thing to learn. Its very relaxing on the brain even though most RPGs are pretty passive by genre.
my favorite lessons were when teachers gave us a simplified simulation, a small reward for doing the best and then letting us do the simulation, when all was said and done we were in a much beter position to say "oh that's why x didn't work or y did"
Extremely interesting and informative episode! You could expand on the general topic quite a bit imo. How about an example fusing _all_ topics of, say, a fourth grade school year into one extensive RPG campaign while pointing out the possible intrinsic and extrinsic reward possibilities? I'd love to hear about that.
omg im doing a assignment on gamification and this helped me gain a better understanding of a subtopic! thankyou!
I think that an issue that many students have is that individual lessons dont have context within the class and more broadly in the educational environment which is why you get the question "why am I learning this?" A quest-like system could help alleviate some of that by providing a structure by which students can measure progress and could provide short and long term goals to help students stay on track. But it would have to be designed well.
So in a nutshell:
"Unpleasant design"
If you grow military training into public education, there is system (development/legacy) debt.
in my middle school math class we had an "extra credit" that was written for the whole class to work on together. Trying to peice together massive problems with multiple people working was a mess, but more often then not we ended up getting it. It was amazing, and more classes should do things like this.
I hope more schools watch this and make class more engaging, I and many of my class mates would love this but school most likely will not listen. I can hope though
I am an assistant librarian in a middle school, and I would guess most of your teachers would love to make your class more engaging. If you're in the US they face ridiculous hurdles to be able to do so. They have required materials they have to cover in such a prescribed manner that it really sucks much of the intrinsic value out of teaching. If you're curious, ask your teacher how many hours of paperwork they have to do in a week that isn't preparing lessons, teaching, and grading.
In December I was able to start employment at a local VR company after being on long term sick for years (been teaching myself C#, unity, VR during this time). The company I work for uses VR to create training software for hospitals, oil refineries and the nuclear industry. This subject is something I feel is often not given enough consideration (thankfully we have university researchers in the field of education involved in our projects). Thank you so much for making a clear video on this subject, I now feel I can offer some more input into the design of future projects.
Will share!
My 8th grade English has my younger sister now and (before school got cancelled because of a certain virus) turned the entire curriculum into a game. There were guilds and a shop and everything. Ngl, I'm kinda jealous. Especially since my sister isn't that much younger than me lol
Tell us more! :)
That's the thing. The ENTIRE CURRICULUM was gamefied. Not only one or two subjects: the entire curriculum, the whole education system, has to be gamefied to work.
Right now I was making a slide show for the students with multiple choiice questions. 100% honest!
Help me improve!
I'm a math teacher IRL and I tried this once. On the first day of class, I had students separate into the four corners of the room based on their favorite core subjects: Math, Science, ELA, or Social Studies. Then I had them choose where they wanted to sit with the only caveat being that they had to spread out according to their favorite subjects as much as possible -- better to have one person who likes math at each table than one table who is filled with math lovers. My idea was that they would all bring unique skills and interests to their group. Anyway, I also developed little roles for the group members to fulfill, like classes or archetypes in a game. I let them name their parties and let them know that certain things would be worth certain experience points and rewards, etc. etc.
Absolute failure. The students were against it almost immediately and pretty much berated me for even trying. I didn't get any constructive criticism. The planning that went into it was just... unbelievable. The system was good; the participation was not. I'm never going to try something that ambitious with a bunch of teenagers ever again. The apathy and angst was just too much to overcome.
This channel is the only thing keeping me sane
This is so great, should be a series!
Great video!!! Helps me so much on my final project!!
I did my thesis at the teachers academy on this very subject! :D The positive benefits that gamification han have if implemented properly. It's so great to hear it here as well :)
My psych class had two part tests: first people were placed into groups of 4-5. Each group was given a set of questions, and the group didn’t have to answer all of the questions. The second part was similar, but with more questions and on your own. It was an enjoyable class
I have to agree (as someone who just finished college) that traditional school grading felt quite discouraging. like i had a health bar and every assignment that that i didn't do perfectly inflicted damage on my grade, and for some classes that felt out of my control. I might have been more willing to work if it felt like i was working towards a better score, than every error setting me back.
I look forward to someone doing science to test out these ideas. I am somewhat skeptical of many of them, but science > gut feelings.
Give a psych major some people and they might do it.
The murderhobo grognards are usually smart enough to spot these kinds of systems and either learn what they are expected to do or find ways to break them if they're too boring.
Sounds like someone has rediscovered the project group and multiple-field projects and put fancy words on them.
I would only change so that the Extrinsic ones were the buffy upper body part and the Intrinsic one was the buffy lower body part, seeing how they are adopted and focused on.
Such experience points would absolutely ruin my productivity and motivation. I was a very often sick kid with 1/3 to 1/2 missed classes every year, despite having best or second best grades in my class. If I couldn't go for perfectionism, I'd just do good enough.
In the next pragraph I'll use Polish university scale, which has grades from 2 to 5 (best), where 3 is required to pass.
At my university there were some subjects where getting 4 or better was done by maybe 5% of students. It killed my perfectionism, so I went for good enough 3s. In some cases I did speedruns - got some 5 at the start, then got 2s for being absent, which averaged to passing 3. On the other hand, if the subject was easy/doable enough to get maximum score, I did it, so my final result was 4.5.
I'm sure a lot of smart students would just speedrun to the worst passing experience level.
Engagement and developing a sense of intrinsic rewards are great; teachers labor mightily to encourage them. Games can, in the right context, be powerful educational tools. But.
Condescending to students is a sure route to DISengagement, and the "Lessons are like quests, and learning them is like leveling up!" pitch being hand-waved here is both simplistic and patronizing. Like Principal Skinner telling Bart to make a game of licking envelopes.
5:45
Egads! We aren't far from 2024!
Jiminy Cricket, that 237 XP to Film series joke shook me.
Also, didn't Matt already have a UA-cam series where he talked about movies?
I'm a middle school educator and I found this video fascinating (what you were talking about with intrinsic vs extrinsic rewards is super applicable to classroom management too). To other educators, I would suggest looking at what he said as A great teacher tool, not THE silver bullet to education. If you think about it like that gamefication will fail you because there is no silver bullet to education. We all know differenating to all of our students socio-emotional/academic needs and levels does not make implementation as simple as that 😅. Just another great tool to consider. Thanks for the video!
I had a history class in middle school where the class was split into teams, and then we played a game throughout the semester where each team was a group of colonists coming to the Americas. We had to secure funding, claim and settle land, and decide how to use our resources. It was one of the most engaging experiences I remember having in school.
The ONLY film series on Extra Credits!
I really like the "all the tests and assignments connect into a story" idea.
Unfortunately, I didn’t get to experience this, but both of my siblings did (I’m still jealous, and I’m in college now (lol)). The Fourth Grade Teacher at our school, the ol’ Mrs. West (alias) structured her curriculum around the idea of a classroom community.
The first activity of the year focused more on physics mixed with History - Each student made a covered wagon, which had to carry a maximum amount of supplies for their “journey to Oregon” (we lived in Oregon). When everyone was done, Mrs. West established an “Oregon Trail” around the fields and through the school halls. At each stop, the travelers drew cards for fortune or misfortunes along the trail, and eventually “settled down” in the “new land” of their mostly plain classroom.
From there, each activity and lecture was meant for the “settlers” to build a classroom society. They voted on who had each classroom job, including the major, banker, and “petshop owner” (who cared for Patches the Hamster). They made a flag, named and designed a simple money system, and generally treated the classroom like a town.
Mrs. West was eventually arguing with the P.E. Teacher and cafeteria manager for use of the gym for little bazaars, where students could use their money and sell homemade crafts and bake-sale goods for a day. Older students were given a few bucks to support these “local businesses”, and students from previous years with Mrs. West could redeem their old monies for the new currency.
Nearing the end of the year, Mrs. West took the class to a place which was meant to simulate “adult life” at a kids level; I don’t remember what it was called but it had a neat day-plan program associated with it. Basically the students got the feel for a “real-world” environment instead of their desks for a day.
The last field trip of the year was student-decided, and from what I saw my siblings go through it was a very unanimous decision because the class was working as a town unit and always framed their ideas to benefit this little corner of the universe which they had control over.
I wish more teachers would employ this kind of community learning and group development. Even when my sister came home with tales of “Oh! The Drama!” (Like you can have that much in fourth grade), there was still a sense that they would do school projects together, because helping each other helped the town. Sure, it’s a watered down and simplified reality, but in fourth grade I think what Mrs. West did was pretty amazing. She has since retired, but I’ve seen her at school and church gatherings and seems to be doing well. She inspired me, and she wasn’t even my teacher! I hope someone else takes a page out of her book in this type of classroom structure.
That vacuum cleaner looked really familiar, and I had to wrack my brain to realize why I recognized it. It's modeled after the Suck-o-matic from Rocko's Modern Life, which, wow, haven't thought about that show in ages. Good times.
Anyone less watch this in 2024? Matt don’t hold out on us. Do the film show!
5:37
I'm in training to become a Biology teacher myself right now, and a number of ideas here look interesting yet impractical for me to start trying to implement in the near future. (Which is a given, since teaching is a hard job that takes years to hit a comfortable stride with.) One of your suggested strategies stuck out to me in particular in this regard: filling your experience bar over the semester/year. I like the idea of forward progress and growth in that manner, but there are several complications it brings. One, it lacks clarity for if a student is currently "on track" to have the desired grade. Two, it assumes the teacher already knows how many points will be in the semester, which I don't know exactly as a new teacher, even if I've got an outline of it. Three, it potentially makes assignment values less flexible - it's not rare to remove exam questions which turned out to be unfair, or add points to a project that took more class time than expected, or even have entire chunks removed for the sake of time. (Heck, just look at the world right now.)
My point being, this sounds fantastic, but can't be implemented as-is. It must be tempered with wiggle room, clarity, and a strong understanding from the teacher on how their year generally pans out. Y'know, like how a designer needs to understand the patterns in how countless unique players will experience their game differently.
As a teacher - lovely ideas and could completely work. But gamification can be tough on a whole class, all lesson format. However if senior management got on board, you’d have a chance. But this would require the sort of revolutionary change that state schools would not be able to institute - still, lovely idea.
Can I just say how much I appreciate the Rocco's Modern Life reference? Bless.
I would LOVE to have more episodes dealing with intrinsic reward/motivation and extrinsic reward/motivation and how certain games can do that well.
As someone who is currently studying psychology, I have a big interest in how games motivate their players to learn their mechanics and seek out knowledge for knowledge-sake.
Like how Civ could teach many about history because they linked the wiki for each faction to some real historical events, or how some games teach you about min-maxing certain stats to achieve the most optimal builds, basically going from surface knowledge about a subject to being closer to knowing the details and inner workings of for example how reactions form with molecules. How multiplayer games incentivize group learning, meta-building, and admiration and motivation to be better.
It would be interesting to see how you can make a boring task seem rewarding by chaining it with a better reward when you reach say level 60 of something and a whole new chapter opens up with some awesome cutscene to get you started on your journey to level 70.
I really want to implement the motivation games bring out in kids and adults to make learning something which is loved instead of hated!
I want grades to be like a level meter, something you would want to reach 100% in, instead of tying it to self-worth and seeing say a grade of 60% to be final acceptable.
Theres only one problem with the "grouping of students with different skills and interests", like all role playing games, the ratio of different "classes" are completely skewed
My teammates can answer test questions for me? Guess I don't need to study as much. In my experience once you shift responsibility from the individual to the group, everyone ends up doing less work. Also dividing into teams by strengths sounds like a good idea until you realize how unbalanced classrooms are. Kids are generally grouped together regardless of how far apart they are in ability. You get one "diamond" player with a group of silver players and suddenly one person is carrying hard.
I've never understood the analogy between experience points and marks in a course. Experience points are usually an infinite resource. You can keep getting more as long as you keep sinking time into a game. But there are only so many marks in a course. If you don't earn them by a certain time, you'll miss them permanently, and missable content is usually considered an annoyance in games.
Real life is the hardest core rogue-like.
Absolutely loving the group project suggestion, though. No more do-nothing mooches w/ zero excuses.
This is was a quick scratch at a field of study that still needs more work and is close to my heart. If you got interested, look up James Paul Gee's writing on the topic, for example, as a pretty good starting point.
I love that you use the vacuum from Rocko's Modern Life.
I am an advocate of gamification as I have noticed its reach through evaluation. Intrinsic rewards are something I'll try to incorporate in my lessons certainly.
I've studied a lot of Game Design when I was a game developer and now I am a teacher (I still work with games in education in specific projects).
Gamification is awesome on specific students, but I have a really hard time applying it on a regular class, for two major reasons:
Not every student is into this kind of thing, making it more detrimental than benefical. A lot of players will think this is "my teacher is a nerd and is ruining his class". A lot of people simply don't want to be a part of it, they have preconceptions about "levels, parties and mages" that they think it is lame and they think they are being forced upon this. Some of them will refuse to take part in it and won't understand why this is important, which will be a hinderance to their "party members".
2) It is really troublesome when your student's parents and your own faculty doesn't understand gamification. They tend to blame your innovative methods as the source of the problem. If a student tells his father he got a bad grade because he refuse to "roleplay as a healer in geography classes", the teacher will be blamed and his method will be the reason.
Those are the reasons I don't apply it in regular classes.
On the other hands, I have a couple of students I advise that have interest in this kind of thing, so I apply gamification on those specific students, on those specific projects I advise (mostly into robotics and game development)
My advice is to apply the spirit of gamification without all of the trappings. It's not the game words that make this style of teaching work, but the substantive changes you make that align how your class is taught with the ways people actually learn. You don't need to call it exp for a point-based grading system to be an improvement over traditional percentage scores. You don't need to call them quests to allow students to revise past assignments. You don't need to call them "parties" in order to grade groups collaboratively in the ways he described in the video (not the best example but the easiest and I should be writing a paper right now, lol). Nothing that games do right when teaching players is unique to RPGs.
As for dealing with administrators and parents who don't get what you're doing: your best weapon is research. Base all of the changes to your course on educational research and keep hard copies of those studies in your office. If administrators or parents challenge you, whip them out and tell them that everything you're doing is consistent with the latest research about how students learn. You need to present it not as you doing this wild and crazy thing you came up with yourself, but as you utilizing the most cutting-edge educational research to provide students with the best learning environment possible. If you need help finding studies like that feel free to reach out.
1:48 THAT MOB PSYCHO 100 REFERENCE NO WAY I'D MISS IT WE APPRECIATE A HARD WORKING BEAN
1:57 This reminds me of the first time I fought the Ultima Weapon in FF14. I was in a four-person party with guildmates that were all level-capped (I was also, technically, overleveled, but not by much, and I was still using like 57~ish gear). I was barely able to keep the main tank standing with my healing, and I knew I was being carried, but I still felt like a *god damned hero*.
I was pretty meh on some of those but group quizzes sounds really innovative
I like to put little games into my lessons but I've never thought about an entire lesson as a game concept. I usually put crossword puzzles or quiz games, and the rewards are often biscuits or similar sweets.
Some of the best classes Ive had used gamification of some kind or integrate something inherently fun. APEuro had toys relevant to the lessons (my favorite was a marie antoinette toy whose head popped up. It was hilarious) and memes related to history like " one does not simply invaded russia. She was also much more animated in lectures that kept up excited to learn.
I had another teacher had out "Evan Dollars" that we could use at the end of every month to buy items or trade for extra credit. Or my Shakespeare teacher let us act out the plays and we all got to have an Ides of March party. Togas and everything. Even in college, my favorite teacher had prompts done with game cards and we had to string the cards together somehow to make a story with those cards. Its wacky. Hilarious. And is still something I like to keep with me when make my dnd campaigns.
"In every job that must be done, there is an element of fun. You find the fun, and - SNAP - the job’s a game!"
Teaching does not need to be "gamified" at all, it just needs to be creative and engaging. Lectures drain the life out of students, as does homework. We need more field trips to experience things ourselves, more projects were students create things like cities or governments to tackle learning head on, and live first-hand stories from those that were there or things like plays were you can recite what you were learning. But these take work and can not be measured to see if a teacher is teaching well. Just ease off the teacher and let them teach to the student instead of teaching to the test.
Assign bonus points that can be used to skip exams if a person has enough or add to their grade, have teams monitor who did the different parts of the project and give bonus points for each element of the project (so long as the project gets a B or A grade). If a person ends up always doing most of the work, they don't have to do exams and can use leftover points to boost their grades. Since these grade boosts can be the difference between passing and failing, lower grade students would have a greater reason to participate while higher grade students would want an opportunity to never study for end of year exams again, or if they're thinking long term, increase their final grade for university applications, etc.
5:20 my school tried this- and it didn’t work. Pretty much every group ended wit one student answering every question because they were the agreed upon “smart one”. Minus I think one who had a few real competitive students
Here we are in 2024, what about the film series? 5:35
Yes, when is that?
I liked the idea of presenting multiple concepts in the arc of one quest. The idea of discrete and separated subjects is more of a stumbling block than an asset. And a lot of the things that we teach weren't discovered in isolation. I think it would be a benefit to create scenarios were students learn concepts similar to how people originally pieced together the ideas or in a context where such an idea would be a useful discovery.