Gamification

Impact in the classroom

There is a general doubt about education regarding how we -teachers- can make it more
efficient and enjoyable.  First of all, it is important to know how students learn.

The main learning styles are: (1) visual (2) auditory (3) physical /learning by doing, (4)
verbal (5) logical, reasoning to see the big picture, (6) social (7) solitary

The use of gamification in our classrooms could be a viable answer with views in the future
and that these styles may rely on. Technology has a strong influence on most aspects of our daily
life. Because of this, many children and adolescents under 15-16 years old have been born as digital
natives, surrounded by all types of technological devices you can imagine. Also adults and
professionals are adapting to them and increasing their reliance on them.
The objective of gamification as an educational resource is to boost the engagement and
motivation of the students as well as capture their interest. But nowadays, there is limited use of
elements of games in non-game contexts due to: 
 insufficient access to technology, 
 lack of professional expertise in merging new technologies with traditional instruction, and 
 resistance to changes.
This is why Lynch advises us to understand how gamification may facilitate learning
systematically. Three essential points support the use of gamification in education:
 It helps the student's brain to deal with new information.
FOR INSTANCE: With gamified lessons, audio-visual presentation, bites of
schematized information and repetitive patterns.

The brain processes information in our memory through two channels—visual and auditory.
When information is presented using both channels, the brain can accommodate more new
information. But in order not to overload it with information, it needs to be presented in small
chunks in an organized way. This allows the brain to integrate and organize the new
information to schemas that already exist in our long-term memory.

Also, the attention span in humans has decreased from around 12 to 8 second due to the
digital revolution. Apart from that, it has some beneficial effects like faster reaction time and
the increase of the ability to multitask. This generates the need to adopt modern ways, as
gamification to transfer new knowledge to our students.

 It might enhance inspiration and engagement in the student.

GAME ELEMENTS EXAMPLES: immediate feedback and earning badges for
completing the challenges successfully

There is a strong social component in gamified learning that is full of benefits on brain
function. Engagement activates neurotransmission in the brain, brain plasticity and lowers
brain inflammation and effects of stress on it. Also delays dementia in the elderly population.

 It alters the brain's reward and pleasure centre and eases the learning process.
There is a release of the neurotransmitter dopamine when a student wins a challenge or
successfully achieves a goal.

This pleasure results in a long-lasting affinity for the subject or for solving complex problems

The influence of games on the pleasure center has important effects on learning itself.
Dopamine also controls neuronal plasticity within the hippocampus, developing a
phenomenon that facilitates the acquisition of information and skills.
In practice, the world implementation of gamification in classrooms is significantly low because of
a lack of educational policies from governments (Oxford Analytica, 2016, page 18). But when
individual teachers tried to use it with their groups of students, there were two predominant
methods: gamified courses and gamified activities.
 Gamified courses are mainly employed at universities for several reasons. One of them is that
this approach is easier to apply in short-term courses than in an annual one, as there is at
primary or secondary school. Furthermore, university professors may have a broader space
and freedom to develop different pedagogical strategies. 
University instructors  often researchers accustomed to publishing the results of their
experiments.
Countries with tightening educational budgets may encourage the professor’s innovation that
leads to greater use of gamification in order to gain employment in a competitive job market.

 Gamified activities are most common at a basic educational level, where teachers use
gamification to supplement (but not replace) the core teaching structure designated for each
group. The purpose of this method is to engage students without bypassing traditional
approaches.
Examples in schools depend on in their emphasis on gamification. An unintrusive platform,
such as the Ticket to Read program rewards students from 6 to 12 with ‘tickets’ for
completing reading passages. It awards schools ‘gold stars’ when more than 90% of their
participants read a passage in a week. Like the long tradition of awarding gold stars for
completing assignments as incentive.