Gameful
@alonsofedz
alonso.fernandez@cat.mx
BEYOND GAMIFICATION
— Alonso Fernandez —
Ready Player 1
Are you a gamer?
Gamification applies game-design elements and principles to non-game contexts.
Gameful Pedagogy builds game mechanics into the course design itself.
Becoming gameful
Level up
Failure
Choice
Feedback
Transparency
Level Up
“You’ve all got a 100% in this course, it’s up to you to keep it that way”
Give students the opportunity to grow, to build up their grade as a reflection of their learning and their skills.
Games have different skills or abilities that the player needs to improve to become better and reach the end goal.
They start from 0 and build up those skill sets by playing the game and finishing tasks or missions.
Failure
Focus on the Princess, not the pits.
Give students the opportunity to fail without penalty. The objective is growth and learning, not getting it in the first try.
In a game setting, players are allowed to fail as many times as they need. There is always the opportunity to start over.
There are no hard penalties for failure. Failing doesn’t take away from the overall gaming experience, and you can still reach the end goal.
Choice
Choose your own adventure
Give students the freedom of choice. We don’t all follow the same path when going somewhere, why should it be different for our students?
Most games allow the user to choose their own way on how they’ll reach the end goal. Even linear platformers have different paths to get to end a level.
Most of the time, even though the choices have been different, the result is the same: winning the game.
Feedback
(beep) (beep) (beep)
Give students constant and meaningful feedback. Be smart about your rubrics. Keep in mind that feedback comes in all shapes and sizes.
Most games give the player immediate feedback on what they did wrong, or what they need to do in order to improve.
Whether it is a mere constant beeping when you’re low on hearts, or a checklist of objectives to complete, the player is aware of what to do to improve.
Transparency
“Thank you Mario! But our princess is in another castle”
Give students what they need to succeed from the beginning. Have assignments defined at the start of the term and have clear expectations on each assignment.
Games are straightforward in the path to victory. It is very clear what you need to do and where you need to go from the very beginning.
There may be hidden paths or shortcuts, and there may even be side quests, but you don’t get too side-tracked from the main path.
Understanding gamers
griefers
achievers
socializers
explorers
What am I?
The Bartle Test classifies players into the four types.
https://matthewbarr.co.uk/bartle/
A note for non-gamers: It uses some gamer lingo and is targeted specifically at people who play MMORPGs, but you can replace its reference to video games with games that you’ve actually played, such as chess and softball
Defined by:�A focus on winning, rank, provoke chaos and drama, direct competition.
Engaged by:�Ranks, Leaderboards
griefers
Defined by:�A focus on socializing and making connections, making community.
Engaged by:�Friendships, Groups, Guilds
socializers
Defined by:�A focus on status, achieving goals, rewards, and beating challenges.
Engaged by:�Achievements, Rewards
achievers
Defined by:�A focus on exploring the world, mechanics, understanding and discovering the unknown.
Engaged by:�Story, Mechanics, Hidden Treasures
explorers
Some Stats
This is in no way a statistical representation. It is however, an average of the scores of 346 grade 10 students.
Disclaimer: Gameful learning is not about making school easy…or even fun. This is about designing environments where students are encouraged to focus less on their final grades, and more on the craft of learning; where they are motivated to face the very real struggles of mastering challenging new material, but persist day after day and are able to see progress; where they take responsibility for their learning, and make self-aware choices regarding how they can best learn and be assessed on their development of content mastery.
—Cait Holman & Barry Fishman
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