Using gamification in teaching: Engage, educate and excite

A teacher with children stood over a globe of the world, with children pointing to it
Reading time: 6 minutes

In an era where student engagement can be as challenging as the teaching itself, educators are constantly seeking innovative ways to capture attention and enhance learning. Gamification has emerged as a dynamic solution, promising to turn education into a more engaging and enjoyable experience. But what does gamification really entail, and how can it be effectively implemented in teaching? Let¡¯s have a look:

Level up your teaching with gamification
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What is gamification?

At its core, gamification is the strategic use of game-based mechanics, aesthetics and game thinking to engage people, motivate action, encourage learning and solve problems. In an educational setting, it transforms the learning experience by making it more interactive and rewarding, akin to the way games captivate and hold the interest of players.

Essentially, gamification leverages the innate human desire for competition and achievement to foster a more stimulating and immersive learning environment.

This strategy not only makes education more appealing to students but also encourages them to take an active role in their own learning, fostering a positive and stimulating educational atmosphere.

Why is gamification important in education?

Educators today stand at the crossroads of tradition and innovation. With the advent of technology and digital tools, teaching and assessment methods are rapidly evolving. And as we continue to explore the vast potential of these trends, it's essential to gather insights from experts in the field.

The significance of gamification and play in the learning process is well-documented. According to Johnson, Smith, Willis, Levine and Haywood, in their work, '', gamification techniques encourage the natural desire for socializing, learning, mastery, competition, achievement, status and self-expression. They argue that these techniques help motivate students to learn and improve their cognitive and social skills, leading to a more engaging and effective educational experience.

This perspective aligns with the constructivist theory of learning, which theorizes that learners construct knowledge best through active engagement and experiences. Considering this, gamification in education is not merely about adding game elements to teaching but about redesigning the learning experience to foster active participation and immersion, thereby deepening comprehension and making learning more memorable.

By treating education as a form of play, learners of all ages find it easier to confront challenges, manage failures and celebrate successes, echoing the natural learning process experienced outside the classroom. This approach for teachers not only makes learning more enjoyable but also mirrors the rewards-based systems they're likely to encounter in the real world.

How gamified learning can increase students' skills

The effectiveness of gamified learning in augmenting and training students' skills cannot be overstated. By integrating game mechanics into the educational process, learners are encouraged to take an active role in their education, leading to a higher level of engagement and participation.

This, in turn, often results in a deeper understanding of the subject matter and a significant improvement in problem-solving skills. Gamification stimulates learners' curiosity and motivates them to progress through learning milestones, effectively turning the acquisition of new skills into an enjoyable and rewarding process.

Helps students engage with their learning

Additionally, research conducted by Hamari, Koivisto and Sarsa further underscores the positive impact of gamification on student engagement. In their study, '' they analyzed the outcomes of gamification across different settings and found that it indeed improves participation and engagement levels. The study concluded that when implemented thoughtfully, gamification could significantly enhance motivation and engagement, thereby promoting better learning outcomes.

This evidence strongly supports the notion that gamification, when aligned with educational goals and balanced with traditional teaching methods, can serve as a powerful tool for educators to facilitate more effective learning experiences.

The dynamic and interactive nature of gamified learning supports a diverse range of learning styles, making it an inclusive method of active learning that can cater to the unique needs of individual learners. Ultimately, by making learning more interactive and enjoyable, gamification not only supports the acquisition of subject-specific knowledge but also cultivates critical soft skills such as teamwork, communication and time management, which are invaluable beyond the classroom.

Enhances retention and recall

Gamification further stands out in its ability to enhance memory retention and recall among students. The engaging nature of game-based learning activities encourages repetition and reinforcement, key factors in consolidating new information. According to a study by Wouters and van Oostendorp in their paper, '', students who engaged in gamified learning showed significantly higher levels of retention compared to those who underwent traditional learning methods.

The study highlighted that the interactive and engaging components of gamified elements helped with encoding information more effectively, making it easier for students to retrieve information when needed. This aspect of gamification, therefore, not only makes learning more enjoyable but also more effective, particularly in fostering durable learning that extends beyond the classroom.

A teacher stood over their students working pointing at their work

Best practices for incorporating gamification in education

Implementing gamification in teaching requires more than just adding points and badges to educational activities. To ensure it enriches the learning experience effectively, educators should adhere to a set of best practices.

Firstly, it¡¯s crucial to align game mechanics with learning objectives. This means that each element of gamification should have a clear educational purpose, for example, whether it¡¯s to reinforce knowledge, encourage teamwork, or develop problem-solving skills.

Use meaningful rewards

Offering meaningful rewards is vital. Beyond physical rewards, intrinsic motivators such as unlocking new content or gaining access to more challenging levels can significantly enhance engagement and motivation.

The importance of personalization

Finally, personalization plays a key role in successful gamification. Allowing learners to choose their learning paths or avatars and personalizing rewards and challenges to their level of skill can make the learning experience more relevant and engaging.

Ways to implement gamification in your teaching

Here are practical ways to apply gamification in your classroom:

  1. Enhance motivation with game-based elements: Implementing point-scoring systems, leaderboards and badges can make learning more fun and motivate students to strive for better results.
  2. Encourage positive competition: Create challenges and contests among students to encourage them to engage more deeply with the material. Ensure the competition stays friendly and constructive.
  3. Interactive learning modules: Use technology to create gamified lessons that are interactive and adaptive, much like the AI tools discussed in our AI webinars. These modules can provide immediate feedback, which is crucial for language learning.
  4. Storytelling projects: Adopt the role of AI in fostering creativity, allowing students to construct stories using AI-enabled writing tools. This not only helps with language skills but also encourages creativity and imagination.
  5. Progression-based learning: Design a curriculum that allows students to unlock new levels or topics as they progress, similar to how they would advance in a game. This provides a clear sense of progression and achievement.
  6. Real-life rewards: Incentivize learning goals with real-life rewards, which can range from extra credit to classroom privileges. Doing so can encourage learners to take their 'gaming' achievements seriously.
  7. Feedback loops: Like AI, gamification thrives on feedback. Provide recurring feedback to help students understand where they're excelling and what they need to improve.

With these strategies in mind, you can begin to integrate more gamification elements into your teaching practice. Just as artificial intelligence is paving new ways for engaging learners, gamification presents endless possibilities for creating captivating and effective educational experiences.

Education is no longer just about conveying information; it's about actively engaging students in a way that makes learning irresistible. By using gamification, you can transform your classroom into an arena where each lesson is an adventure, each task a challenge to be overcome, and learning itself a victory to be celebrated.

Activity idea

Here is one idea/activity for using AI to gamify your learning:

  1. Use a text generation platform to receive either a long word or a short phrase.
  2. In teams, learners will work together to create as many new words as possible within a set time limit.
  3. Points will be awarded for each word created, with bonus points given for the longest or most creative word.

Learning more about gamification and AI

Don't miss the chance to deepen your understanding and expand your toolkit for engaging students through AI.?Be sure to take a look at?Billie Jago's?free video series and lesson plans, which provide a comprehensive introduction to using AI in the classroom. These will be showcased throughout August and September 2024.

Designed for educators who want to quickly grasp the fundamentals of AI and learn practical tips that can be implemented in the classroom immediately.

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  • A Teacher sat with a child at a desk in a classroom helping them with their writing,

    5 ways to support students with dyslexia

    By Anna Hasper

    Children seem to be starting English lessons younger than ever, often before they can even read and write. This means that learning differences like dyslexia may not have yet made themselves apparent.

    While it¡¯s not a language teacher¡¯s role to diagnose specific learning needs, it is important for us to monitor our young learner students¡¯ progress. If we think a student might be showing signs of dyslexia (or another learning difference), we should feel comfortable referring parents to the right place early on. This can make a huge difference in the learning process.

    There are many forms of dyslexia and it affects students in various ways. However, some may include the following:

    • having difficulty reading (especially aloud)
    • struggling with spelling
    • problems remembering the sequence of things
    • finding it hard to follow instructions
    • misbehaving or disrupting the class
    • being very quiet or shy (especially when doing reading or writing activities)
    • falling asleep in class.

    Dyslexia is not a learning disability; it¡¯s a learning difference.

    What do Magic Johnson, Richard Branson and Tom Cruise have in common? They all have dyslexia. So learners with dyslexia are certainly not less capable; in fact, they often excel in spatial thinking and creativity. The difference is that their brain works differently, so they find visual processing and using their working memory challenging. For example, they may struggle to remember what was said and face challenges when trying to link sounds to letters.

    The most common issues are related to reading, spelling and writing, but dyslexia can also impact concentration span and planning skills. And all these challenges have a severe impact on learners¡¯ self-esteem.

    Providing effective learning opportunities for young learners with dyslexia might require teachers to reframe how they see dyslexia. Avoid seeing it as a dis-ability, but rather as a form of neurodiversity: the brain functions and learns in different ways.

    Creating the conditions for learning

    Many ¨C if not most ¨C young learner teachers feel they are not appropriately trained to deal effectively with learners who have dyslexia in a classroom context.

    In an ideal world, all EAL and mainstream teachers would receive in-depth training to better deal with neurodiversity in the classroom. But for now, let¡¯s explore some modifications that help create a more enabling learning environment in which all learners ¨C with or without dyslexia ¨C can progress.

    1. Getting to know them

    If we want all learners to progress to their next level, we need to get to know them. Only then can we provide learning opportunities that start where they are. Get to know their strengths, weaknesses and interests as well as their learning profile; where do they like to work, who do they work well with and what kinds of tasks engage them fully? These are the starting principles of differentiated teaching and all learners will profit from you taking the time to get to know them beyond their name.

    Top tip:

    Observations are an extremely useful tool to gain insight into learners¡¯ levels and learning preferences. My favorite activity is to get young learners to create a personal profile.

    This can be done in their first language ¨C at home with parents ¨C or as a shared writing activity in class. You provide the stem sentences, and learners complete them with drawings or words. You can hang the profiles on the wall and use them to start talking about ¡®differences and similarities¡¯. Alternatively, you can have a learner present their buddy to the class based on their profile, depending on the level and age you teach.

    2. Creating a collaborative culture in the classroom

    If we want learners to help each other in class, we need to create a culture of ¡®helping hands¡¯. Focusing on developing good relationships in your classroom, between you and the learners but also between learners, is vital for a collaborative culture. Use activities that focus on building understanding through sharing ideas. Integrating collaborative learning activities will help to establish supportive relationships and makes struggling learners feel more confident in the classroom. They know they can first talk things through with others and ask them for help before completing a task independently. This will benefit all learners, not only learners with dyslexia.

    Top tip:

    Think-pair-share is a well-known collaborative activity and can easily be adapted to include some movement too in the form of HuSuPuWu!

    This activity will help learners share ideas and allow for differentiated thinking time. Ask your young learners a question you want them to respond to, give them thinking time and tell them to put their hand up when they are ready to talk (Hu).

    Encourage them to look around, find another person with their hand up and stand up (Su) to walk over and pair up (Pu).

    Together they share ideas before returning to their place and writing up their ideas (Wu).

    This will be especially beneficial for students who need more time to process, love to move and want to get confirmation or support.

    3. Providing multi-sensory tasks and activities

    Providing multi-sensory activities is already common practice in most young learner classrooms. It allows learners to process information using their stronger senses while strengthening their weaker areas.

    Multi-sensory teaching (MST) acknowledges that all brains learn in unique, different ways and is a well-known method used when working with dyslexic students in their mother tongue. So instead of only telling the story, find images that illustrate the events, draw a story path for learners to follow, or get them to visualize the story.

    Doing this increases the ¡®routes of memory¡¯ as Kormos (2017) calls it, and enables information to reach the brain via different pathways, visual and auditory, which strengthen the message.

    Top tip:

    When learning new words, break them into syllables by clapping when you say them. Then show the word and break it up visually (e.g. fri-end), and get them to make the word with playdough or in shaving foam as they say it. Get them to keep saying it as they write it and then check it.

    4. Setting clear, manageable instructions

    Because dyslexia often impacts working memory, following instructions can be even more challenging than it already is for young learners. We need to reduce the processing load by breaking up instructions into manageable, achievable steps.

    Focusing on just a small amount of information better enables learners with dyslexia (Kormos & Smith, 2012) and to be honest, all young learners ¨C and our classroom management ¨C can benefit from this.

    Also, check whether you need to ¡®tell¡¯ it or can you ¡®show¡¯ the instructions? Presenting instructions in a multisensory way where you, for example, use the whiteboard to visualize the instructions, and use gestures and body language to support your oral input will facilitate understanding.

    Top tip:

    Learners benefit from talking things through as talk plays an integral part in meaning-making. So why not get learners to turn to their elbow buddy and repeat what they need to do in their own words? Another effective way would be to record the instructions so they can listen back as many times as they need.

    5. Adapting your materials

    Being aware of what works best for the unique brains of learners with dyslexia allows us to tweak existing materials to make learning more accessible. Think about the color of paper you copy on or the background color of your slides. Learners with dyslexia cope better with colored backgrounds as it reduces word blurring. When learning to write new words in their workbook, use a highlighter to highlight the area between the middle lines where the body of the letters needs to be written.

    Top tip:

    Nowadays, many young learner coursebooks have audio resources available, but not always for readers or stories. Use assistive technology to get the selected reading text recorded. Struggling readers can listen to the audio as they read the text alone. In this way, they will feel that they are reading independently whilst working on letter sound correlation as well as the rhythm of the language.

    The English language classroom can be stressful for learners with specific learning needs. Now, we don¡¯t need to ¨C and can¡¯t ¨C ¡®fix¡¯ learners, but we should try to ¡®fix¡¯ the environment and provide an enabling, inclusive learning environment for all. By tweaking our teaching, we might better enable learners who face challenges, ensure they feel supported in their learning and allow them to bloom in our classroom.