Well, all good things must come to an end and the same can be said of my micro-MOOC #GE4L. Although, while it might be the end of the MOOC, my journey into the world of Gamification has only just begun. As I said in my last post, I’m keen to start applying what I’ve been reading and learning about in this course and I intend to do this in the near future.
Every game has “elements” or features that keep people engaged. Some games have a lot; others have very few. The choice of what to include should be deliberate. With learning games, you should consider how each element supports the learning process.
"Students rewarded by badges are spending up to 155 percent more time actively engaged within the classroom than their counterparts in the non-gamified classroom. Students in the gamified classroom are willingly attempting challenge assignments to earn additional badges and move up the leaderboard”
A game’s mechanics are the rules and procedures that guide the player and the game response to the player’s moves or actions. Through the mechanics you create, you define how the game is going to work for the people who play it.
Game-based learning has received increased attention as a way to motivate students and engage them with the material. Have a look at these blogs and resources.
In this post, I state that design in GBL is falling short because it is not combining the best elements of PBL and classroom best practices. Largely, we are creating fun ways to help students with rote content and not placing them in a serious, inter-dependent environment utilizing content.