I actually read a whole journal article today. This is a huge achievement as I tend to find
academic readings incredibly tedious and they don’t hold my short attention
span. I think I enjoyed this because it
was so relevant to me in my context, didn’t go overboard on the use of the thesaurus
and got to the point quickly. Having
said that ... it was still long for me.
In particular I like the way it clearly
showed the link between game activities and learning. Activities/learning is
goal orientated, has a clear set of ‘win’ conditions (I like that phrase), and
has obstacles to overcome to achieve success.
It sounds so easy and obvious.
It also had some criticism of gamification
- good to read both sides. It talks
about those with high intrinsic motivation can be turned off by
gamification. Another is that a learner
can get so caught up in getting “all the points” in a particular area, spending
an excess time, at the detriment of doing other learning. Also leaderboards can turn people off. If someone had 50000 points and you had 100,
would you feel motivated or defeated?
Wonderings ... I wonder about how rewards
would work in the class; in games you need better and better rewards to keep
motivated - how would this look in a class?
In a class of 50, how do you ensure that you are really getting everyone
on board?
Glover, I. (2013). Play as
you learn : gamification as
a technique for motivating learners. Proceedings of World Conference on
Educational Multimedia, Hypermedia and Telemcommunications, 1998–2008.
Retrieved from http://shura.shu.ac.uk/7172/