Integration of Ludic Educational Activities into

Classroom Teaching. Gamification

Olimpius Istrate

University of Bucharest, Faculty of Psychology and Education Sciences

90 Panduri str., ROMANIA
E-mail: olimpius.istrate[at]g.unibuc.ro

Abstract
Sometimes, involving students in educational activities can be a challenge, especially when
they lack motivation for learning, when they have gaps in preparation, when the results of the
proposed exercise do not seem to be immediately applicable or when the topic addressed does
not correspond to any need already acknowledged by the student. Although the ideal is a
participation sustained by intrinsic motivation, by awareness of the usefulness of learning
acquisitions, by the undertaking of a long-term effort towards knowledge and exploration, there
are situations in which the integration of ludic elements is necessary and contributes to raising
interest, revitalizing openess and motivation for learning. In addition, well designed games
contribute to achieving learning goals and building skills for life. The article is looking upon the
influence of gamification in formal education, trying to depict the effective ways and the
conditions for integration of ludic activities into classroom teaching.

Keywords: instructional design, gamification, education situations, classroom teaching

1 Introduction
Digital games and social networks are familiar to students, being a significant part of their day-to-
day activities. However, although they are the "digital generation", studies show that they do not
have the exercise of learning by using the new technologies and the ability to use digital resources
as tools of intellectual work (Šorgo et al., 2017; Bennett, 2008). These are formed over time, and
it is the role of the teacher to reveal to students the usefulness of the discipline-specific tools that
will be part of their professional, social, cultural activity – online dictionaries, digital maps, virtual
thematic communities, news feeds, online courses, e-books, multimedia editing software, virtual
labs, simulators, etc. Furthermore, the expectations of digital natives in school are different; the
learning space should be more open to the real world and provide them with resources and
opportunities similar to those in their horizons of action, nowadays and in the near future.

2 Why using (digital) games in the education process

At least occasionally, stimulation through game activities is beneficial from the perspective of
psychological processes that support learning – sensorial, cognitive and affective – and to create a
favourable atmosphere in the classroom. Most commonly, however, the explicit purpose for which
games are used in the teaching process is to achieve learning goals – information acquisition,
attitudes development, value transfer, skills training – subsumed to the specific competences of the
school curriculum for that discipline. We are talking about those learning acquisitions that are
measured and whose progress is recorded in the catalogue by grades. If the game is enjoyable, it is
more likely that students will learn more easily – adding a game gives them a "break" in the school
program (Petsche, 2011).
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Equally important, the development of transversal skills is favoured by playful activities,

especially by the most interactive ones (Bermingham et al., 2013). The games contribute
significantly to the development of the skills and abilities necessary for personal and professional
development, such as teamwork and collaboration, communication, negotiation and argumentation,
initiative, creativity, decision making, critical thinking, problem solving.
Introducing playful activities in the teaching process has the great advantage of encouraging
student participation, mostly targeting those who feel uncomfortable in "conventional" educational
situations. Involvement of all students in activities is an important goal of the teacher and an
indicator of his/ her pedagogical competence, therefore designing activities by including educational
games is an asset of which the teacher should make use at least from time to time.
The style preferred by some students in learning is another reason why teaching methods should
be varied, and if the teacher constantly resorts to various games that allow interactivity, movement,
or have visual support compensating the information content delivered orally by means of schemes,
images and films, then classroom performance would most probably increase significantly. Teachers
are required to provide students who prefer a style other than auditory or passive (better represented
in frontal approaches) chances to participation and performance.
Last but not least, educational games have a positive impact on pupils' emotional and
intellectual development (Korpershoek et al., 2016), contributing to self-confidence and helping
them learn how to better manage their emotions.

3 Transposing an education situation into a game

There are (or there should exist) many similarities between educational situations and games, both
activities being built as phases or successive activities with a given purpose, preferably interactive,
which stimulate interest, which capitalize and lead to a new level the knowledge and skills already
developed, which lie within the approximate horizon of experience and expectations of the person
to whom it is addressed.
Generally speaking, we can say that a learning activity is a particular type of game, determined
and conditioned by the psycho-physical development needs of the human being. The game can be
also viewed as an elaborate form of learning activity, attractive and engaging.
The value of the game, as a "natural" learning activity, has led to the emergence of a new
concept, "gamification", that has begun to be used since 2008. The most invoked definition is
describing gamification as „using game-based mechanics, aesthetics and game thinking to engage
people, motivate action, promote learning and solve problems in a non-game context” (Kapp,
2013), and similar attempts to circumscribe the term are built in the same manner, seeing it as a
type of process to be used in designing and developing (learning) scenarios to improve participant's
involvement towards a desired outcome. Therefore, we can trace the educational use of gamification
back to Antiquity (Haghoj, 2013; Angour, 2013) – game play has always been an important mean to
reach educational goals – as long as those education situations have been benefiting from a process
of (more or less rigorous) planning.
Educational games are seen as having the following main benefits: are exciting, challenging and
generate competition, can form cooperation, collaboration and negotiation skills, can offer immediate
feedback and rewards, allow skills training and acquisition of knowledge in a pleasant way.
The design principles of educational (digital) games are fundamental principles, already present in
the curriculum design process, but some require adaptations and they apply a little differently in order to
respect the paradigm of a playful activity. Feedback in the game, for example, should be immediate or
after a relatively short period, as compared to current educational practices (Dicheva at al., 2015).
In the well-designed games, students are more likely to assume the purpose and to participate
voluntarily, having predominantly intrinsic motivation to take part, than they do in conventional
learning activities. Therefore, translating an educational situation into a playful form is preferable
278 University of Bucharest and “L. Blaga” University of Sibiu

whenever circumstances allow. More accurately, in designing an educational situation it is about

highlighting the attractive part of the learning activity, which offers reward, interesting and useful.
The circumstances refer to:
(1) time available to the teacher for designing the activity;
(2) time available for developing a learning activity through play;
(3) type of learning content;
(4) students’ availability (both individual and as a group) and their level of readiness/
preparedness;
(5) external factors such as school culture, parents' expectations, physical space characteristics, or
existing resources.

(1) Designing a learning activity requires more time as it is more creative and unconventional. In
other words, it is unlikely that a teacher will have the time to tackle each specific competence and
content unit through high value added learning activities (beneficial to development of higher order
thinking skills, collaboration, innovation, critical thinking, problem solving, communication, for
attitudes and values), especially when school curriculum is loaded.
Learning activities in the form of digital games can be a handy solution, as these usually provide
the framework and conditions under which activities can be designed, deployed and evaluated:
• templates and examples,
• predefined modes for interactions between student-content, pupil-student, student-teacher,
• tools for assessing performance, for time measurement and for immediate feedback.
(2) On the other hand, carrying out a complex activity in the class takes a longer time – for
organization, activity itself, evaluation and capitalization.
(3) There are learning contents that are less suitable for a direct ludic approach, regardless of the
cognitive capacities involved in the activity - the multiplication table (memorising, understanding the
algorithm/ logic of progression), the analysis of literary text (memorising the algorithm/ stages,
application in new situations, identifying particular situations, practice etc.) - but any content can be
"packed" into a game, even as a pretext or as a peripheral activity of the game.
(4) When we include a ludic learning activity, especially in digital form, we must consider the
availability of the class for such an approach and the ability of the students to look at it as a sequence
of the education process. Although very rarely, it may happen that the play-way method does not
"work" – the game can sometimes remain at the distractor level, consuming more time than expected,
taking unexpected turns that limit or make it impossible to be used for educational purposes.
(5) The role of games is not always obvious to everyone – there may be situations where fellow
teachers, school principal, parents, or students themselves challenge the use of games within lessons.
These external factors of influence are not to be neglected, favouring or hindering the educational
functions of unconventional methods. Furthermore, particular conditions such as access to computers
and Internet in school, technical support and space available for games, the degree of familiarization
of (all) students with ICT tools are to be considered.
In the literature dealing with the theme of "serious games", the most monetized design principles
of games for educational contexts are visual status, social engagement, freedom of choice, freedom to
fail and rapid feedback (Dicheva at al., 2015). To these, there are some principles to be added that are
rarely mentioned, because of their generally applicable character and their large use in the curriculum
design process: educational purpose and personalisation of learning. Game-specific "mechanics" are
an additional factor for motivation, being mainly a tool for recognition and celebration: points (for
reaching goals, participation, contributions etc.), badges (for participation, for contributions, for
purchases, for performance etc.), levels (successive degrees of difficulty) and rankings.
How can we actually translate a learning path into a playful experience? The step suite
below is just a suggestion. Ideally, the design starts with setting the goals and thinking about the most
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appropriate instructional strategy, but you can start from designing the evaluation or from a particular
piece of content, which can be an event or an example previously given by a student (the trigger).
1. For a specific lesson you choose, review the curriculum standards and choose your theme.
2. Set the instructional objectives – what do you want pupils to have as learning acquisitions and
at what level.
3. Explore the possible applications of the themes. For example, for electric current:
electromagnetic crane, hydroelectric generator alternator. You can choose examples of applications
from the students' immediate horizon. You may find a lot of resources on the Internet: short films,
pictures, conceptual maps, news, recent breakthroughs in the field. Of these, choose the most
relevant, given the objectives you have proposed and the time available.
4. Depending on the learning objectives and the chosen applications, transform the learning
content into a chain of "challenges" for students. What concrete questions should the student be able
to answer or what tasks should be able to meet so that we consider each instructional objective
achieved? You will actually get a training map, or an ”operationalized curriculum”.
5. Depending on the learning time available, transpose one or more tasks into a game-type format,
using some of the gamification principles and game-specific mechanics.
6. To the resulted activity suite (partially conventional activities, partially game-like), add
moments such as gaining attention, presenting objectives, recall of prior learning, general
presentation or introduction of content elements, providing learning guidance and feedback,
assessing performance, enhance retention by summarising the key elements of the lesson/ game.
These can also be approached in a playful form and within the chosen theme – e.g., the teacher can
play the role of one of the characters, providing feedback as the game develops.

4 When can games be used?

The games can be successfully used at the beginning of the school year or semester to make an
initial assessment or an introduction to the suite of activities and themes to be addressed.
The onset of a teaching activity can also be engrafted on a game. It gains attention in a pleasant
way, it raises interest better than in a "conventional" approach and, most importantly, can launch
challenges in the zone of proximal development, to which each student has the opportunity to respond
and is motivated to respond, thus increasing the chances that the elements of the new lesson will
already be explored and (partially) understood through personal effort, with greater significance for
learning.
A special success can have a playful activity developed in pair, at the beginning and at end of
the lesson. It can be the same game with two parts – one to start teaching, the other to end it – or we
can create two slightly different games. The same game can also be done twice, once when the lesson
starts, followed by the “teaching”, and once again at the end, when the student will be able to respond
"competently" to the proposed game tasks, following the acquisition of the new learning content.
Intuition and opinions (episteme), used first to solve (or not) the challenges of the game, receive help
from scientific knowledge (gnosis), confirming or refuting the initial response, and learning
acquisitions are more likely to be meaningful to the student and be more persistent over time.
Short games can be inserted within a teaching activity, especially when this has a longer
duration, to strengthen learning by pointing out key elements or by providing openings for what
follows. There are intermezzo moments, constructive breaks, accompanying natural interruptions of
attention, and which bring students back to work.
Recaps at the end of a chapter or at the end of the semester can fully benefit from the game-
based approach. Trivia games, for example, or Flashcards, Hotspot and so on, will give a festive, funny
note, will stimulate and will capitalize on the spirit of competition, making it a pleasant activity.
280 University of Bucharest and “L. Blaga” University of Sibiu

5 Making use of the game activities

An important suggestion regarding the integration of the game into the teaching process is to
highlight and capitalize on those elements specifically addressing learning inserted in the game.
Often, at least at primary and lower secondary levels, learners are not able to detach from the play
activity the "lessons" that justified their use during the classroom lessons or as homework. It is
compulsory that the moment of capitalisation be present as a natural extension of the game, ending it
by pointing learning acquisitions from the perspective of their usefulness and the way they integrate
into the general set of learning acquisitions within the discipline (specific competences) and beyond
discipline (transversal skills).

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