Thinking back to educational experiences, one may argue that the most memorable aspects was when the typical class was instead, made a “game day, board game day” or something similar. Nowadays, board games have went to the wayside as video game adoption by leaners has exploded. In 2016, 64% of the United States population play video games which has steadily grown from the 58% in 2012 (Nielsen Games, 2017). Game-based learning is designed to be adaptive, allowing updates to be done in days versus waiting on a new revision of a book to come out which may be anywhere from a year to several years (Cahill & The Learning Counsel, n.d.). With most of the population of having played video games, schools have begun to incorporate game elements into courses and classrooms.
Incorporating games into courses is not anything new. In economics class, students may have played Monopoly to learn about buying and selling property or simulating playing the stock market. In math class, students may have played various games that may have showcased probability. Examples of using games can be found in almost every subject in both K-12 and higher education. However, as technology has became more advanced and more of the U.S. population are familiar with playing video games and the evolution of intricate storylines in a majority of video games, education has again needed to further evolve to make sure they can continue to keep the attention of students. Other sectors, such as the military have looked to make simulation at a part of a way to involve learners on the university level.
The National Security Agency started the Codebreaker challenge in 2013 to further connect to professors and students learning and teaching cyber security and other technology issues (National Security Agency Central Security Service & Betsy Stein, 2019). The challenge originally began with a handful of schools but currently has over 330 universities competing in the challenge. The draw to the Codebreaker challenge is that it provides real-world scenarios that the agency has dealt with in some form and provides a backstory and a narration for each task to assist in immersing the ethical hacker in understanding the purpose for the task and a goal for them to accomplish. Computer science departments have started to incorporate and, in some cases, count the tasks as extra credit for some of the assignments. The challenges change every year and each participant in the challenge receives a variant of the solution to encourage collaboration but still allow learning. For example, the two top finishing schools in the participation ranking, University of North Georgia, and Georgia Institute of Technology, had 287 and 195 participants, respectively (National Security Agency, n.d.). Those participants, comprised of faculty, staff and students volunteered and signed up without any requirement from the institutions or departments.
Though that one example is in the early stages it does demonstrate that incorporating some game design elements does help to encourage participation. Using game design elements in non-game contexts is known as gamification (Deterding, Dixon, Khaled & Nacke, 2011). A product that takes games is Gradecraft. Gradecraft is a learning management system (LMS) that was developed by the University of Michigan that allows educators to build curriculums than incorporate game elements. It utilizes the following concepts: Earning up, which means all the students start off with a score of zero and they work their way up by completing assignments, coming to class, participating, completing blogs, etc. Increased autonomy, where students are given options of assignments to complete, instead of being instructed to complete every assignment given in the course. Freedom to fail, which allows the students to take risks without it impacting their grade. Finally, tangible progress is the ability for students to view the progress they have made at any time and the ability to view the number of points an assignment provides and how completing the assignment would increase the number of points to their overall score (University of Michigan, n.d.). As stated by Holman and Fishman, the goal isn’t to make gameful learning fun or easy but rather, “… 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 down 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” (Holman, University of Michigan, & Fishman, n.d.). The side effect of going to a gameful learning model is that instructors must create more assignments than students can complete to be able to provide a range of choices. Though Gradecraft is being utilized by many well known universities, getting into K-12 appears to be a challenge due to their previous pricing model (IlliniCloud YouTube, 2017).
The previous two instances demonstrate gamification on varying degrees, the NSA utilizing it to engage the learner and to give them the point of view in which they would experience it if they worked for the agency. For Gradecraft, it is a broader scope because the accrual point system can be and has been applied to many subjects, not just courses pertaining to video game or computer science. Some critics feel that gamification does not facilitate learning, is challenging and only applies to younger children (Rieber, 1996, p. 44). As history has demonstrated, it is very important and necessary to have everyone, especially educators, onboard and involved with any changes to the existing curriculum in order for additions or transitions to occur as smoothly as possible, if at all (Reiser & Dempsey, 2017, pp. 8–11). Gamification of learning is an emerging area, especially with eSports teams being created in the collegiate level, it will continue to grow. In 2016, there were six eSports teams in colleges and universities. By 2018, that number grew to 63 (“20 Colleges With Varsity eSports Programs,” 2020). Gamification is not a passing trend but with more and more students and even educators having knowledge and having played video games, you will see it becoming more widespread and having a bigger impact than any one game.
References
- 20 Colleges With Varsity eSports Programs. (2020, February 8). Retrieved April 19, 2020, from https://www.gamedesigning.org/schools/varsity-esports/
- Cahill, G., & The Learning Counsel. (n.d.). Why Game-Based Learning? Retrieved April 11, 2020, from https://thelearningcounsel.com/article/why-game-based-learning
- Deterding, S., Dixon, D., Khaled, R., & Nacke, L. (2011). From game design elements to gamefulness. Proceedings of the 15th International Academic MindTrek Conference on Envisioning Future Media Environments – MindTrek ’11. https://doi.org/10.1145/2181037.2181040
- Holman, C., University of Michigan, & Fishman, B. (n.d.). Why gameful? Why GradeCraft? Retrieved April 15, 2020, from https://ai.umich.edu/blog/why-gameful-why-gradecraft/
- IlliniCloud YouTube. (2017, April 18). GradeCraft Demonstration. Retrieved April 11, 2020, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9a6c5tG-Td4
- National Security Agency. (n.d.). NSA Codebreaker Challenge. Retrieved April 18, 2020, from https://codebreaker.ltsnet.net/home
- National Security Agency Central Security Service, & Betsy Stein, B. (2019, October 17). Creating and Cracking NSA’s Codebreaker Challenge. Retrieved April 18, 2020, from https://www.nsa.gov/News-Features/News-Stories/Article-View/Article/1991042/creating-and-cracking-nsas-codebreaker-challenge/
- Nielsen Games. (2017). Games 360 U.S. Report. Retrieved from https://www.nielsen.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2019/04/nielsen-games-360-report-2017.pdf
- Reiser, R. A., & Dempsey, J. V. (2017). Trends and Issues in Instructional Design and Technology (4th ed.). New York, NY: Pearson.
- Rieber, L. P. (1996). Seriously considering play: Designing interactive learning environments based on the blending of microworlds, simulations, and games. Educational Technology Research and Development, 44(2), 43–58. https://doi.org/10.1007/bf02300540
- University of Michigan. (n.d.). GradeCraft. Retrieved April 22, 2020, from https://www.gradecraft.com/