Since the 1970s and 80s, video games have been increasing their popularity over time as a form of entertainment. Today over 200 million people play social games on Facebook on a daily basis. Social gaming, which has really taken off in the past few years, continues to grow at a rapid pace as games have become more and more elaborate. The trend of using games as a way to engage and motivate its users has been used in a variety of ways such as receiving a badge on Foursquare, or completing your LinkedIn profile to move the profile completion bar to 100%. This type of reward-based gamification has become commonplace especially in new social media.

In today’s digital generation gamification has become a popular tactic to encourage specific behaviors, and increase motivation and engagement in an educational context. Gamification, the “use of game design elements in non-game contexts” (Deterding et al, 2011, p.1) is used to educate and motivate learners. According to Nicholson, there is one problem with the name. By putting the term game first, it implies that the entire activity will become an engaging experience, when, in reality, gamification typically uses only the least interesting part of a game – the scoring system (Nicholson 2012, p.1). The common use of gamification is to take the scoring or reward elements of video games, such as points, levels, and achievements, and apply them to an educational context. This strategy is now being implemented in many educational programs to help educators find the balance between achieving their objectives and catering to learner needs (Huang, and Soman 2013, p5).

In a traditional learning environment, delivering a meaningful experience to today’s learners can be difficult. Many of today’s learners are digital natives. They grew up with digital technologies and are motivated by it. Instructors have the challenge of adapting the learning process for the learners whose motivation and engagement is absent. However, with the successful application of suitable gamification techniques, the delivery of the information can transform a simple task into an addictive learning process for the learners, thereby increasing the motivation and engagement of learners.

I think a gamification approach requires a specific process with increased complexity (in steps or stages) implemented in order to achieve both effective training and a high level of satisfaction. A badge that is issued to a single learner upon completion of a step in the course is visible to the entire class. This indirectly creates a competition between learners since all the learners will be able to see the achievement and will be motivated to reach the level. An instructor can use a badge to define an activity to be rewarded. For example, a learner that added a new comment (initial level) to the discussion board which would qualify as a social learning activity. This action would be reward with a badge. Another badge would be issued once a learner facilitated a discussion with the class (higher level). In this example gamification is not only a learning approach but also a higher-level development strategy. Through the acquisition of badges learners can be rewarded for accomplishing learning tasks, but what they have gained can be used as a basis for other elements in learning and in the real world.

I think the use of gamification is an excellent way to motivate and engage learners. However, I think receiving a badge for a job well done is meaningless without an understanding of what specific skill(s) the badge rewards. Although games can’t be used to replace pedagogy, I think they can be used to enhance the overall learning experience.

Deterding, S., Dixon, D., Khaled, R., & Nacke, L. (2011). From game design elements to gamefulness: defining gamification.

Huang, Wendy Hsin-Yuan, and Dilip Soman. 2013. Gamification of education.

Nicholson, S. (2012). A user-centered theoretical framework for meaningful gamification. Games+ Learning+ Society, 8(1). Retrieved fromhttp://www.quilageo.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/Framework-for-Meaningful-Gamifications.pdf