What exactly is Gamification?
When educators think of gamification, they typically think their learners will have to play a game to learn. This would need to fit their content variety and can be difficult to find much less to create. Others might think about turning a singular activity into a game and only turning small parts of their content into a game.
Fortunately, there’s a way to get your content into a curated game, and while we won’t say that it won’t take effort on your part, you don’t have to have your students playing video games, or have all the tech skills to build your own mini games, you can simply turn your entire course into the game itself.
What if your students moved through your content and assignments as characters would through a game?
It really is that simple! What if your students were able to “create” their own characters as themselves and “level up” throughout the course as they show their mastery of content and competencies? You can go as far as asking your students to create “character sheets” for themselves based on their majors, potential minors, and career aspirations, and move through your more traditional assignments. They could gain experience points along the way and do “side quests” to help study, expand their knowledge on related content, and gain more points. What do their levels and points get them? Perks of course! Every character in a game gets extra goodies as they level throughout the game, so should your students!
When students are “too cool for school”?
Not everyone wants to participate in the “extras.” In the same way that extra credit is optional for a reason, you might find students who are “too cool for school” and not want to participate – and that’s okay! This gives students the autonomy to choose whether or not they need or want to dive deeper into a topic, or just do the “base” content to pass the course. They never have to interact with their experience points, leveling, etc – although depending on their perks, they may eventually want to!
You can make a version of your gamified course that allows students to opt-in or opt-out of the game portion.
This often looks like having a “base course” that your students have to participate in. These don’t have the game theme or “skin” on them, they are simply the projects and materials they will need to pass the course. Students can then choose to participate fully in the game, partially, or test it out and see if they like it.
This option is entirely up to you. With a personalized course containing multiple options, it’s easy for the students to interact with the “game” portions, but still not fully participate in the game itself – i.e. doing the work to earn the skill points, but not doing anything with their new skills/perks. They’re doing the work, they’re participating, the hope is that they’re still having fun, but they don’t have to “play” per se
Storyboarding
You can create a fantastical story to increase engagement in your game, or you can choose to leave it more “generic open world.” Using inspiration from various genres of entertainment can mean making a story for your students to move through, which might encourage them to participate from the start, but certainly as your semesters change, you could change your story without having to change the assignments. Game designers typically call these “skins.” You can skin your game to anything you’d like, and even redo the skin as you want to change it up! Fortunately, this means that if you aren’t feeling that creative buzz to implement some of the story and world building moments for your students, you’re welcome to leave it out.
The important storyboarding comes from deciding how your students will earn experience points, and what those will mean for them as they “level up” throughout your course. This can look an almost limitless number of ways, and purely depends on not only how you want to set up your Moodle course, but how you’d like your students to develop in your course.
Why gamify your course?
Engaging your learners in a new way, and allowing them to opportunities to showcase their knowledge, as well as expand their own horizons can be a rewarding way for students and instructors alike to increase motivation within your classroom – and beyond! Everyone loves to learn when it’s fun!
So, no really, why gamify your course?
- Increased content delivery – with student autonomy
- You can actually increase the amount of content your students are intaking, without having to force them into assignment structures and types.
- Create interactivity and personalization in the learning delivery
- Students can not only interact and engage with the traditional classroom model and content, but expand their horizons to dive deeper into particular topics, specialize extra content for their particular career aspirations, or simply learn more about your course’s topic as a whole.
- Overcoming disengagement
- Having un in a classroom, and working towards a perk goal, mastery goal, etc is always a way to get students to tune back in and engage with content. They can choose to step outside of their comfort zones further, dive deeper into a topic you mentioned that sounded interesting and better prepare themselves for life outside of your classroom content!
The benefits of a gamified classroom setup as a role-playing simulation are all about engagement and personalization. Your students can choose to dive deeper, push themselves outside of their comfort zones, give themselves some study practice and get a boost on their next main assignment, or just be overall more aware of the breadth of information in your content area. Even if it seems like the benefits are “minimal” engaging in a novel environment, where they are rewarded for their work in ways other than a traditional “grade it and move on” type of assessment, can be an enriching experience for students.
On Campus Resources
Educational Technology staff is available for consultation on project planning, and design, and to teach workshops or tutorials on various software. They can be contacted by Email (EducationalTechnology@wooster.edu) or can be booked for consultations through Bookings.
The College of Wooster’s training site hosts a course, created by Educational Technology Associate, Caitlyn Deeter, on Alternative Assessments. It has a section specific to Gamification
This Example character sheet is not necessarily a “one size fits all” approach to creating a character sheet for your role-playing style, gamified course. But may offer you inspiration for the types of considerations, and information you might have on your own character sheet. Host this fillable Word document, or fillable PDF on Moodle, or add the PDF or a PNG into your class Team’s notebook and keep your student’s sheets digitally! It is recommended to host your sheets digitally so that your students don’t have to keep their character sheets on them for their coursework, but so you and your students may also have editing access to them to update and keep track together in real-time. If you host your character sheets in your class team, in each student’s section, only that student will have access to the sheet, keeping things private for students!
These tips for maintaining
Additional Readings and Resources
- The Power of Play in Higher Education is a wonderful resource for real-life examples and studies in gamification, simulations, etc.
- Chapter 34 in particular discusses role-playing simulation in your course, and turning your course into the game itself!
Technology requirements
Fortunately, the only software you’ll need is the software you’re already using! You can dive into additional plug-ins to create additional assignment types or the restrictions for leveling on Moodle. If you haven’t been using Teams all that much, you might have to learn a little bit more about its capabilities. So long as you have the willingness to learn aspects of the software you are already using, you can absolutely make a role-playing game out of your course!
What does it look like?
To our knowledge, there isn’t an example of this on our campus. However, at CFAES Wooster (Ohio State’s Wooster Campus), a professor has tried two “skins” and two varieties of courses to find a way that fits.
Within this course, she had a base course they had to participate in, and allowed students to participate as they wanted in the “game.” Between 2021 and 2023 the game was “The Wooster Witch Project” inspired by the Blair Witch Project. The “Wooster Witch” is a ghost or phantom of a witch who haunts the grounds of CFAES Wooster. She has been seen on the academic campuses and in Secrest Arboretum. While the story may not be true – there is no ghost at Secrest… to our knowledge! – it’s a fun theme that gets students intrigued on day one, and with fun videos and graphics throughout the course, there’s always a ghost at every click!
Students completed additional assignments and earned experience points (XP), certain levels of experience points leveled them up within the course, and they were able to earn “perks.” Some of these perks could include a “get out of jail free card” on a quiz. Or earn enough XP as a class and earn a take-home exam at the end of the semester!
But when you’re gamifying a course like this, how are you interacting with the assignments? What kinds of assignments are you creating? How much more work has to go into these projects to get them going? Honestly, not as much as you’d think. Students can write additional papers, participate in optional discussion boards, search through Social Media for content to critique, even generate exam questions for you. Whatever you would do in a “normal” course, just add to what they can dive into! The goal is to allow your students to choose topics and modules they resonate with and “dive deeper.” Give them the opportunity to really tailor a class to their specific academic, professional or personal interests beyond the main course content.
With so many ways to customize how your game is going to work based on your grading scheme, activities, etc, there’s no way to just give you a tutorial on how to create your gamified classroom.
With that in mind….
Some tips and tricks to know:
- You can set your restrictions to open up full sections of “level options” that allow them to bounce between types of assignment or assignment topics. The possibilities for assignment restrictions are wide-open to you! This prevents students from jumping right to “level 3 assignments” and skipping some of the foundational work, or other assignment types, but still allows them to move between topics and types of assignments as their interests shift throughout your course
- Assignments don’t have to be major papers! Discussion posts, small research and reflect journals. You can include the opportunity for larger assignments (and maybe they’re worth more experience points), but they don’t all have to be massive amounts of work for your students to complete – or for you to grade!
- Stay on top of grading. As students turn their work in, try to keep on top of the additional assignments. With that in mind, set clear boundaries with your students about how long it may take you to grade work, so that they are not turning in assignments the night before they want to use a perk for the next level!
- Be sure to have a firm handle on how you are grading. Are they receiving additional grades for their work? Are you strictly using a traditional grading method for base content and all “extras” are for leveling within the class? How do you calculate that point system? Does an A give you more points than a C? How are you rewarding your students for their effort and work?
- Consider adding gamified activities as well! You don’t have to, but sometimes, internet (or physical) scavenger hunts, digital escape rooms, and simulations (in-person or hosted online) can add some extra fun to your course without it having to be a part of the role-playing portion.
- Look at your assignment loads. Are your base content assignments spread out enough so you’re not overwhelmed if half the class turns in some additional work in a week? How can you spread out some of your base content so that you aren’t bombarded by overwhelming “normal” work, when students can add more stuff to grade here and there.
- Student Feedback! Particularly if you are working with your first gamified course, work with your students! Ask them throughout the course how they’re feeling, how things are working, start looking at the types of assignments they are and aren’t participating in! There’s no shame in co-creating your course with your students! It gives them the ability to feel like they’re not only a part of their learning, but of the future learning of college of Wooster students.
Mastery Grading, Competencies, Ungrading, Traditional Grading….
With so many terms and options it can be difficult to know which is the right grading scheme for you! Don’t overthink it! If you’re not sure about non-traditional grading styles, don’t overdo yourself with your first gamified course. While Gamification allows a great opportunity for some of these other grading schemes, there’s no reason to overwhelm yourselves learning 3 things at once! Use what works for you! There’s no reason a traditional grading scheme couldn’t fit your course if that’s what you know. Once you’re more comfortable with your game, you can start looking at the “rules” and looking at other grading schemes. It all depends on how you are assigning and working with the topics and content in your course!
Still want to learn more?
In January of 2022, Educational Technology held a recorded workshop on “Grading with less agitation“, while there were many topics discussed in the workshop, there were also discussions from your College of Wooster colleagues about ungrading and alternative grading schemes.