Using gamification in teaching: Engage, educate and excite

A teacher with children stood over a globe of the world, with children pointing to it
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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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    Grammar: how to tame the unruly beast

    By Simon Buckland

    ¡°Grammar, which knows how to control even kings¡±?- ²Ñ´Ç±ô¾±¨¨°ù±ð

    When you think of grammar, ¡°rule¡± is probably the first word that pops into your mind. Certainly the traditional view of grammar is that it¡¯s about the ¡°rules of language¡±. Indeed, not so long ago, teaching a language meant just teaching grammatical rules, plus perhaps a few vocabulary lists. However, I¡¯m going to suggest that there¡¯s actually no such thing as a grammatical rule.

    To show you what I mean, let¡¯s take the comparative of adjectives: ¡°bigger¡±, ¡°smaller¡±, ¡°more useful¡±, ¡°more interesting¡±, etc. We might start with a simple rule: for adjectives with one syllable, add -er, and for adjectives with two or more syllables, use more + adjective.

    But this doesn¡¯t quite work: yes, we say ¡°more useful¡±, but we also say ¡°cleverer¡±, and ¡°prettier¡±. OK then, suppose we modify the rule. Let¡¯s also say that for two-syllable adjectives ending in -y or -er you add -er.

    Unfortunately, this doesn¡¯t quite work either: we do say ¡°cleverer¡±, but we also say ¡°more sober¡± and ¡°more proper¡±. And there are problems with some of the one-syllable adjectives too: we say ¡°more real¡± and ¡°more whole¡± rather than ¡°realer¡± or ¡°wholer¡±. If we modify the rule to fit these exceptions, it will be half a page long, and anyway, if we keep looking we¡¯ll find yet more exceptions. This happens repeatedly in English grammar. Very often, rules seem so full of exceptions that they¡¯re just not all that helpful.

    And there¡¯s another big problem with the ¡°rule approach¡±: it doesn¡¯t tell you what the structure is actually used for, even with something as obvious as the comparative of adjectives. You might assume that it¡¯s used for comparing things: ¡°My house is smaller than Mary¡¯s¡±; ¡°John is more attractive than Stephen¡±. But look at this: ¡°The harder you work, the more money you make.¡± Or this: ¡°London is getting more and more crowded.¡± Both sentences use comparative adjectives, but they¡¯re not directly comparing two things.

    What we¡¯re actually looking at here is not a rule but several overlapping patterns, or paradigms to use the correct technical term:

    1. adjective + -er + than
    2. more + adjective + than
    3. parallel comparative adjectives: the + comparative adjective 1 ¡­ the + comparative adjective 2
    4. repeated comparative adjective: adjective + -er + and + adjective + -er/more and more + adjective

    This picture is more accurate, but it looks abstract and technical. It¡¯s a long way from what we actually teach these days and the way we teach it, which tends to be organized around learning objectives and measurable outcomes, such as: ¡°By the end of this lesson (or module) my students should be able to compare their own possessions with someone else¡¯s possessions¡±. So we¡¯re not teaching our students to memorize a rule or even to manipulate a pattern; we¡¯re teaching them to actually do something in the real world. And, of course, we¡¯re teaching it at a level appropriate for the student¡¯s level.

    So, to come back to grammar, once we¡¯ve established our overall lesson or module objective, here are some of the things we¡¯re going to need to know.

    • What grammatical forms (patterns) can be used to express this objective?
    • Which ones are appropriate for the level of my students? Are there some that they should already know, or should I teach them in this lesson?
    • What do the forms look like in practice? What would be some good examples?

    Existing grammar textbooks generally don¡¯t provide all this information; in particular, they¡¯re very vague about level. Often they don¡¯t even put grammar structures into specific CEFR levels but into a range, e.g. A1/A2 or A2/B1, and none fully integrates grammar with overall learning objectives.

    At ÃÛÌÒapp, we¡¯ve set ourselves the goal of addressing these issues by developing a new type of grammar resource for English teachers and learners that:

    • Is based on the Global Scale of English with its precise gradation of developing learner proficiency
    • Is built on the Council of Europe language syllabuses, linking grammar to CEFR level and to language functions
    • Uses international teams of language experts to review the structures and assess their levels

    We include grammar in the GSE Teacher Toolkit, and you can use it to:

    • Search for grammar structures either by GSE or CEFR level
    • Search for grammar structures by keyword or grammatical category/part of speech
    • Find out at which level a given grammar structure should be taught
    • Find out which grammar structures support a given learning objective
    • Find out which learning objectives are related to a given grammar structure
    • Get examples for any given grammar structure
    • Get free teaching materials for many of the grammar structures

    Think of it as an open-access resource for anyone teaching English and designing a curriculum.