by Terry Heick
This article was initially written in 2011 and more recently updated in 2025
Gamification is simply the application of game type mechanisms to “things” without play.
The big idea here is to encourage desired behavior. In this way, “gamification” is equivalent to the installation of mechanisms or systems that recognize and reward behavior. Thanks to increased visibility of the nuance, the documentation of progress and the reward for apparently minor (but critical) behavior, a specific result can be achieved.
Since it encourages internal motivation through a set of circumstances created by externally, gamification is at the clumsy intersection of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation.
While for many, the connotation of the term suggests video games, video games are just an example of the concept of gamification in action – and only to the extent that they are games. Video games are interactive digital sequences that have been gamified. Otherwise, they would simply be interactive digital experiences.
In fact, life is itself `gamified ”-loosely, thanks to informal social competition (` `keeping up with the jones’), to the extreme buzz coupons obtain receipts, cryptocurrencies and comparison of 401K portfolios, to have access to credit cards` “ “ “ “ frequent travel miles. Even sticking a push-pan in the card of each itinerant destination that you have ever visited is a form of “gamification”. As are the Boy Scout badges. You play a game from something that is not.
Almost all social media is deeply gamified – in the ease with which friends can be “collected”, status updates are often used to update progress or activities throughout your day of “real”, or “like” buttons bring you both dopamine and a feeling of identity when you align with others that love the same thing. Share a photo or an update and look at the “tastes” ride, each as a point in a game.
See also The difference between gamification and game -based learning
Gamification misunderstanding
The current problem around the idea is less a question of definition and more in tone.
The reduction in the process of “gamification” to something simple recreational, silly or juvenile fantasy represents a fundamental misunderstanding of gamification as a process. For years, classrooms have been gamified. The notes of letters are indeed the first subjective assessments of knowledge control, but once they are transmitted to the students’ hands, they become game components, passed as proof of the completion of a task, or the achievement of a desired objective (mastering a standard, fulfilling the requirements of an assignment, etc.) here, the headings become instructions for the completion of tasks.
Here is the goal, here are the criteria used to establish the terms of quality, now give a shot and I will assess how much I think you did.
The cumulative weighted average could be the most visible example of gamification at school. Knowledge is evaluated with a series of assignments and tests, and a note note is given as a kind of trophy – just like large trophies, bad guy FS trophies, but trophies. Classification of courses? This is a competition to collect as much as possible, trying to make care what is intrinsically disorderly: learning.
Consider how “3.2 GPA” lacks in connection with a learner, their interests, their history, their progress and their potential. The notes of letters are the attempt to quantify understanding and / or performance in the hope of hiding the ridiculous complexity of the learning process. Via the letter note (against Alternative to notes of letters), performance apparently becomes synchronized in situations otherwise asynchronous. Different learners with different teachers, through different duties, completed instead of different learning styles, with the overwhelming influence of incredibly different personal lives – through this disparity environment, the note note tries to be the only thing that is universal.
But at a huge cost.
In fact, the power of The letter note has become more powerful than learning itself For many, the notions of subsumed knowledge, discovery and self -awareness. It is assumed that the notes of letters and test performance are reliable quantifications of knowledge, but anyone who has already been noted a test knows the danger of this hypothesis. The use of a letter to describe simple and singular performances can be acceptable, but when the implications move towards notions in the longer term “knowledge” and “understanding”, these themes gravitate dangerously towards self -esteem.
Other examples of gamification? Student of the month, the most likely to (insert the verb here), How to rent Designations, “lettering” in a sport, and countless other acts and icons. In the past, however, there have been more learners than visible rewards – more individual ways than possibilities for recognizing these ways. More learners than podium points. The others are sent to vocational school.
The nuance of teaching and learning
Research on students ‘motivation illustrates that students’ motivation is mainly motivated by the intrinsic desire to achieve objectives:
“The fifth family of social and cognitive constructions which has been a major objective of research on student motivation is the objectives and the orientation of the objectives. Nature of the objectives of success or the orientations of objectives. Nature of the objectives Serve to motivate and directly behavior in class contexts. »»
What is the “nature” of the objectives of a student in your class? (Academic) A good note? (Staff) your praises? (Social) peer pressure? Gamification allows large areas of content (such as English language arts) with few performance measures (alphanumeric symbols) which are divided into more granular and feasible concepts and skills. “Writing”, for example, can become “an expert and self-initiated application of the” revision “step of the writing process”. To accomplish this, he gives them a badge or a trophy or a representation of this success – something that students understand and can collect over time. Then, each time this skill is used and improved, badge can become larger or a different color or at several levels or in a way modified to reflect the natural growth of learning over time.
There have been attempts to correct this: each student obtains a trophy, a registration / failing, a social promotion instead of failure of the notes of letters and countless others. But gamification can go so much further for those who are ready to think about it carefully. This idea is nowhere more powerful than in the ability to document and manage various shades of the learner. Rather than offering a handful of slots for “highest performance” to occupy, in gamification, it is the ability to recognize the deeply personalized nature of learning. Not all students want trophies or stickers in gold, or to be tapped on their heads to “study hard”.
The learners rather want – and need – to recognize their unique nature: past experience, interests, cognitive and creative gifts and critical interdependence with those around them. This results in self -knowledge and authentic placement with a set of peers and a community which offers a social context again greater and important.
A gamification system – so well designed – Offers The ability to make it transparent not only success and failure, distinctions and demeritis, but on each stage of the learning process that the gamification designer chooses to highlight.
Each missed maturity date, peers have collaborated with the revised sentence, revisited history, each stage of the scientific process and long division, each original analogy, a closely designed thesis statement, or the exploration of -Pull factors – whenever these ideas and more can be highlighted for the purpose of evaluation, responsibility and consciousness of students.
In the “perfect” learning model, gamification would not be necessary. But until we arrived at this point, it is an ideal adjustment in highly academic learning environments where students should master huge piles of non -authentic content and are permanently measured for their “skill”.
Move forward
There are as many ways to “success” as individual personalities; This is a theme of 21st century. Gamification not only allows the recognition of these ideas, but convincing validation for really personalized learning. To continue to evolve towards healthy communities and a useful global interdependence, we will not have to simply recognize the “different learning styles” or reward “students with low performance”, but rather to correct the hurtful tradition of overly narrow visions of academic success – a challenge with strict standards and results based on results.
Thanks to the creative application of game mechanics – and related innovation in the study program and educational design – it is possible, but the discussion must go beyond video games and badges to the notions of learner’s empowerment, and an almost scary enlargement of the definition of academic success.
This article was republished from a 2011 article by Terry Heick
