Getting Your Feet Wet With Gamification

Are students in your class losing interest in activities?

Many students are gamers at home, so it makes sense to reinforce this in the classroom, especially when educators are switching to make learning more student-centered.

The basics? Set up your classroom learning as a game. Students earn XP (Experience Points) and can earn AP (Achievement Points). You can set up side quests as well. All of these are game elements and students progress through levels in the game. Students can earn XP for completing different tasks. Students are more likely to be engaged, because students still benefit when there is not mastery. Students can earn AP for different achievements related to behavior, actions, and teamwork displayed in the classroom. You can consider giving badges for these accomplishments. When you plan your game, you can plan it more generically or specific to specific content. Students love seeing a leaderboard for the game created. Oh, yeah. Side quests is basically a cooler name for optional homework! Consider making this more relevant to their life than just a worksheet or problems.

Grading? You can choose to grade based off XP, but you may want to consider not displaying a public leaderboard then. Some educators choose to completely separate the game from grading and either way is perfectly fine.

I highly suggest watching videos from Mr. Matera, https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCD6Twy3-HRnKa07H6xG3Ylwto see how he sets up gamification in his classroom.