The last few years proved to be a challenge for the whole field of education. Social distancing, school shutdowns, company lockdowns, and similar problems created a remote learning environment. While online education has steadily risen over the last decade, the previous three years saw it explode without stopping. Naturally, when novelties arise, so do accompanying support systems or mechanisms that aim to either give benefits to or benefit from these novelties. In the case of education, those are predominantly technological or methodological.
This series of blog posts written by gamification evangelist Peter will cover one of these methodological novelties and approaches to traditional and online teaching: the application of gamification and game-based learning in educational environments. We will cover their history, problems and common misconceptions, the methodology, and define what it is, as opposed to how it is often presented. The aim is to answer whether you, an educator, should use them, why, and how.
First, we will cover the basics – the hallmarks and importance of online teaching and a basic overview of games as a science.
The emergence of online teaching
Online teaching has been on the rise for the past decade; when Stanford University launched its online courses in 2011, marking the birth of the modern open online courses or MOOC era, it began with 300,000 participants. A decade later, in 2021, 220 million participants and many educational institutions offered courses. According to the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System or IPEDS, the growth of MOOCs experienced an additional increase of 92% amidst the pandemic. Educators offering individual or group courses over various online learning platforms such as Udemy, Coursera, Lynca, and Skillshare are not even included in these, so the number of participants might be significantly higher.
Naturally, online teaching has its fair share of problems and issues. Work organization and time management-related issues, technological issues, connectivity issues, data privacy issues, psychological issues due to fewer social interactions, additional costs due to technical requirements and staff training, and attention retention issues, to name just a few. However, those are offset by a plethora of benefits, such as flexible work times, easy access, affordability, increased variety, easier resource sharing, a broader reach, the option for smaller classes and grown learning efficiency, potential for personalized teaching, increased collaboration, more detailed records keeping, better possibilities for incorporating technological and other novelties, and many more. The benefits should and do outweigh the drawbacks if done correctly.
In short, all research and data on online teaching trends point towards it becoming a mainstay part of our lives. Latest predictions by experts foresee it expanding and flourishing even more than it has in the last decade.
The problem with ‘games.’
Games have been a part of our lives for thousands of years in various forms. Traditionally, they are defined as activities for diversion or amusement or as a structured form of play. This is how the majority understands them. Games are for children, in a nutshell. It is only natural that it needs clarification when theoretical concepts and scientific approaches like gamification, game theory, or game-based learning emerge. These concepts require specific expertise in various scientific fields to understand, which can cause misunderstandings when combined with the stigma games that still need to improve.
To clarify this, it must be understood that these concepts are about something other than games in the traditional sense. They are fields of science that each use aspects of games and game design approaches to achieve specific goals. To understand what they are, we should redefine the word games. Games, at their core, are activities where one or multiple subjects are put into a theoretical framework and presented with a hypothetical problem to which they must find a solution. It is decision-making based on sets of data and information to find an optimal solution.
Let’s look at a few kid’s games. The game of tag is designated children running after other children, trying to catch them to tag them, and the other children trying not to get tagged. Looking at it scientifically, however, the game of tag is the application of velocity, spatial awareness, and dexterity to either prevent or achieve physical contact. Card games such as Uno are essentially just games where you draw and discard cards to get a better hand than the opponent and win. However, it is the strategic calculation of options, calculated risk-taking, and decision-making to achieve the most desirable outcome. Monopoly is a game where you build hotels, take money from other players, and if all goes well, dad ends up in jail, right? Technically it is, but we could also say that it is applying proper investment techniques, risk assessment, communication skills, and wealth management skills to amass the most wealth and destroy the competition.
This begs the question of what games are. Are they the ‘games’ as we defined them earlier, or are they something more? It is both since what matters is not the interpretation per se but the application of it. As per the first definition, games have implicit goals within their system, and we play them for fun. However, the same goals we aim to achieve with the game can be applied in a broader sense, as seen by the latter descriptions, and games can serve as great vessels to accomplish that. The most famous application of games for learning purposes, when a game stops being just a leisure activity but is applied to achieve a goal outside of the goals of the game itself, was when the first computers and the first operating systems appeared. When Microsoft developed the first graphic operating systems, they preinstalled a few games, such as Solitaire and Minesweeper. Those games aimed not to give employees or customers something to do while on break or procrastinating during work hours but to teach them how to use a mouse correctly. This may have been the earliest and most obvious example of the proper use of a game for teaching purposes on a grand scale. And it worked perfectly. These theories and their merit have been predominantly substantiated by scientific research, which you can find in the links at the end of the post.
Clarifying the differences
As stated above, there are three main scientific approaches to game utilization in modern society, which are also backed by science:
– Game theory
– Gamification
– Game-based learning
Game theory is the theory and science of independent and interdependent decision-making.
An excellent example of game theory would be bidding at an auction or making stock market decisions. Gamification is the application of game designs, game mechanics, and aspects of games in non-gaming contexts to encourage motivation, and participation, drive learning outcomes, and promote and change certain types of behavior. For instance, adding points, leaderboards, or incentives to specific processes or activities are examples of gamification. Game-based learning is the application of game elements and the game as a whole as teaching tools to teach particular skills or achieve specific outcomes, so the game essentially is the training. All three deal with similar issues, but their focus is different. Using card, video, or board games like Solitaire above or various role-playing games to achieve a desired result would be typical examples of GBL.
Conclusion
With online teaching here to stay and gamification and GBL gaining traction, it is essential to understand these concepts and their differences to learn how to implement them in any environment properly, be it education, business, or otherwise. We will cover all three in the following blog posts with in-depth guides on techniques, methods, and approaches, supplemented by examples for each. As scientists researching these topics will attest, successfully implementing gamification and GBL into your teaching practices will result in an even more engaging and successful teaching process.
My neighbor in Slovenia wrote this post; Peter Oletič is a translator and gamification enthusiast with years of experience both translating and writing gamification modules. We have some more about translating: Why CATs are Awesome and Which CATs are Awesome.
If part of your online business strategy is to create a course or program, then check out one of our affiliates. Skool and LearnWorlds both have great services for course creators. There is a lot you can do in this industry. Do a bit of research and practice a program using one of the above companies. When you use our affiliate link, you won’t pay anything extra, but the affiliate will pay us a small commission, which is used to manage this website. Thank you for your support.
Subscribe for more business, sales, and investing posts. Have a lovely day!
