TLS2068

Gamification in Teaching

Lecture 1
Why games?

TLS3075 - Digital Games and Learning in Educational Settings

 What motivates gamers?
● Action (e.g., objectives) ● Achievement (e.g., awards)
○ excitement and ○ power and completion
destruction ● Immersion (e.g., roleplaying)
● Social (e.g., competition) ○ story and fantasy
○ collaboration and ● Creativity (e.g., customization)
competition
○ design and discovery
● Mastery (e.g., scoring)
○ strategy and challenge

Nick Yee. 2016. The Gamer Motivation Profile: What We Learned From 250,000 Gamers. In Proceedings of the 2016 Annual Symposium on Computer-Human
Interaction in Play (CHI PLAY '16). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 2. https://doi.org/10.1145/2967934.2967937
 GBL vs Gamification

Are they the same?

Source: https://www.prodigygame.com/main-en/blog/game-based-learning/
GBL vs Gamification
Gamification

● integration of game elements like point systems, leaderboards, badges, or other elements related to
games into “conventional” learning activities in order to increase engagement and motivation.
● For example, an online discussion forum for a Physics course might be gamified via a badge system:
students might be awarded in a badge awarding system.
● In ideal gamified learning environments, students can see the online badges that their peers have earned
to create a sense of comradery or competition.

Game-based learning

● in contrast, involves designing learning activities so that game characteristics and game principles in here
within the learning activities themselves.
● For example, in an Economics course, students might compete in a virtual stock-trading competition; in a
Political Science course, students might role-play as they engage in mock negotiations involving a labour
dispute.
Gamification in Learning
● Create classroom avatars
○ If many of your students play games that let the player create characters, you
could have your students create alter-egos that they can personalize and build
upon.
○ They can “unlock” clothes and modifications by completing class tasks or
develop different skill sets such as “engineer” or “historian” that you can turn
into custom projects.
● Award badges
○ This can range from handing out simple printed badges after completing an
assignment to having year long online leaderboards.
○ When deciding what sorts of badges to award students. Focus on rewarding
healthy learning habits, such as staying focused or persisting through failure,
instead of simply rewarding good grades.
Gamification in Learning
● Turn learning into class quests
○ Give students agency and motivation by turning learning objectives into
quests! These can be solo quests or class-wide quests.
○ You can give students options for which quests to go on to not only
differentiate learning but also offer them more control over their learning. You
could even create a class-wide quest board that encourages collaboration.
● Connect classic games to school subjects
○ Certainly plenty of teachers have turned chapter reviews into quiz game
shows. But you can work with any games you have access to. Consider
modifying a property-acquisition game you like so that the properties are
historical landmarks. Or have students play a word game but reward certain
categories of vocabulary words.
Benefits of Gamification in Classroom
● Students feel like they have ownership over their learning
● A more relaxed atmosphere in regards to failure, since learners can simply try
again
● More fun in the classroom
● Learning becomes visible through progress indicators
● Students may uncover an intrinsic motivation for learning
● Students can explore different identities through different avatars or
characters
● Students often are more comfortable in gaming environments, so are more
proactive and open to making mistakes
● Higher engagement and concentration levels amongst students
● The opportunity to think outside of the box. Tasks are no longer just about
filling in a worksheet – what are the wider, ‘gamified’ consequences?
 Are benefits of DBGL cross-gender?
● Study shows that gaming approach was both more effective in promoting
students’ knowledge of computer memory concepts and more
motivational than the non-gaming approach.
● Despite boys’ greater involvement with, liking of and experience in
computer gaming, and their greater initial computer memory knowledge,
the learning gains that boys and girls achieved through the use of the
game did not differ significantly, and the game was found to be equally
motivational for boys and girls.

Marina Papastergiou, Digital Game-Based Learning in high school Computer Science education: Impact on educational effectiveness and student motivation.
Computers & Education, Volume 52, Issue 1, 2009, Pages 1-12, ISSN 0360-1315, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compedu.2008.06.004.
 Are benefits of DBGL cross-gender?
● The attitude towards digital game-based learning was found to be positive,
regardless of gender; there was no significant difference in learning
achievements between genders.
● Males were found to exhibit a higher preference and motivation for digital game
learners were based learning and have better engagement and learning
performance compared to female learners.
● Female learners seemed to display higher cognitive abilities in the game content
and learning objectives.
● Gender differences in learning cognitive ability reduce the impact of gender on
learning achievement.
● Male learners tend to set a higher achievement goal in game-based learning
than females, hence they tend to have a better learning achievement.

Liang-Yi Chung, Rong-Chi Chang. The Effect of Gender on Motivation and Student Achievement in Digital Game-based Learning: A Case Study of a
Contented-Based Classroom. EURASIA Journal of Mathematics Science and Technology Education, ISSN: 1305-8223 (online) 1305-8215 (print) 2017
13(6):2309-2327 DOI 10.12973/eurasia.2017.01227a.
 +/- Perceptions of from Students towards DBGL
● Attention - Students’ interest is gained and maintained with variation and
challenge.
○ + Suitable amount of challenge and complexity
○ + Excitement, a new and nice way to learn
○ - Not sure how to play the game
○ - Lack of gameplay instructions
● Relevance - Students understand the value of instruction and can connect
it to their prior learning and personal goals.
○ + Learning project management by practice with a game
○ + Understanding how to utilize lessons from the game in real life
○ - Unrealistic or awkward events in the game

lina Jääskä, Jere Lehtinen, Jaakko Kujala, Osmo Kauppila, Game-based learning and students’ motivation in project management education, Project
Leadership and Society, Volume 3, 2022, 100055, ISSN 2666-7215, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.plas.2022.100055.
 +/- Perceptions of from Students towards DBGL
● Confidence - Students develop their skills with successful learning
experiences
○ + Learning from success and failure in the game
○ + Ability to apply lessons from theory in gameplay
○ + Increased interest in learning project management
○ - Unexpected events in the game, which could not be utilized, anticipated, or prepared for
○ - Insecurity regarding game rules and mechanics
● Satisfaction - Students feel satisfaction as they increase their competence
and are rewarded.
○ + Feelings of enjoyment and fun
○ - Feelings of stress and dislike
○ - Grading based on game results not seen as good or fair
○ - Game crashes or error situations
○ - Dislike for the GBL method

lina Jääskä, Jere Lehtinen, Jaakko Kujala, Osmo Kauppila, Game-based learning and students’ motivation in project management education, Project
Leadership and Society, Volume 3, 2022, 100055, ISSN 2666-7215, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.plas.2022.100055.
 Three Phases of Digitization
1. Alignment of digital education and digital subjects provided a technical
foundation.

Bendik Bygstad, Egil Øvrelid, Sten Ludvigsen, Morten Dæhlen. From dual digitalization to digital learning space: Exploring the digital transformation of higher
education. Computers & Education, 182 (2022) 104463.
 Three Phases of Digitization
2. Digital learning space was enacted and harnessed by redefinition of roles
between students and teachers, allowing for new and deeper learning
forms.

● The situation was changed dramatically due to COVID-19.

“Most teachers responded by a combination of online and pre-recorded lectures on Zoom. Only a
few teachers felt that they were overwhelmed by technology, and reported that they were unable to
lecture this way. The students have responded relatively positively, accepting the situation, and
participating online. We do, however, know much less about the students that do not turn up in the
Zoom lectures, and we worry that some of them give up.”

Bendik Bygstad, Egil Øvrelid, Sten Ludvigsen, Morten Dæhlen. From dual digitalization to digital learning space: Exploring the digital transformation of higher
education. Computers & Education, 182 (2022) 104463.
 Three Phases of Digitization
3. Digital learning space enables institutions to transcend the physical and
institutional borders, and engage in interactions with the broader society.

“This digital classroom consists of many elements, it is Zoom and Canvas and discussion forums,
and exercises and data, video clips and simulations. These elements are not integrated, which
means that the students have to integrate them. This is not optimal, and I spend considerable time
trying to mitigate this. One of the challenges for the students is that the mix of technologies and
procedures vary, depending on the subject and the teacher.”

Bendik Bygstad, Egil Øvrelid, Sten Ludvigsen, Morten Dæhlen. From dual digitalization to digital learning space: Exploring the digital transformation of higher
education. Computers & Education, 182 (2022) 104463.
 Alignment of Dual Digitisation

It is important to realize that the digital learning space is enabled by a large digital infrastructure, i.e., the
interconnected systems and networks of the university and other Internet resources.
Redefinition of Teacher Roles
● The role of the teacher involves less in direct teaching. Instead, it has
shifted to be more facilitating of resources.
● The teacher’s role involves designing and monitoring activities over time.
Lectures (long or short) are only one activity that matters; to facilitate the
students’ learning trajectory teachers need access to new types of data,
such as student engagement with digital sources.
● The e-learning solution is also facilitating the transition towards a more
flexible educational situation, where resources can be orchestrated for
educational purposes.
References
Nick Yee. 2016. The Gamer Motivation Profile: What We Learned From 250,000 Gamers. In Proceedings of the 2016 Annual Symposium on
Computer-Human Interaction in Play (CHI PLAY '16). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 2.
https://doi.org/10.1145/2967934.2967937

Liang-Yi Chung, Rong-Chi Chang. The Effect of Gender on Motivation and Student Achievement in Digital Game-based Learning: A Case Study
of a Contented-Based Classroom. EURASIA Journal of Mathematics Science and Technology Education, ISSN: 1305-8223 (online) 1305-8215
(print) 2017 13(6):2309-2327 DOI 10.12973/eurasia.2017.01227a.