Abstract:
Gamification is a new concept, and, in many ways, it's misunderstood. This article is about how gamification can be used and why it might be effective. I said here might be, because gamification is a powerful tool, but a little hard to apply in education, because it’s new and people think it’s trivial and superficial. It's important to have some measure of skepticism, to know that gamification isn't right for every lesson and it might not help us to learn students and to motivate then, unless we do it right. There are many organizations that are successfully applying game mechanics and applying other lessons from games to resolve their problems, so we can apply those technics in an educational environment. What is it about games, that makes them so engaging and motivating? When we talk about gamification, we learn about psychology, about how rewarding it’s being casual about failure, as a part of the adventure of knowledge. Games have been around throughout all of human history because they link to some very basic aspects of the way our minds work. In order to understand how to use things that are effectively gamified in education, we need to understand what motivation is. What is it that makes someone want to do something? What are different kinds of motivation? And what are different techniques that can be used to help people achieve their goals? Gamification encourage you to be in the real world, doing your activity, learn about things, but in a way that makes the experience better. The review highlights the need for studying what the educational benefits of gamification are, if gamified learning is to become a recognized instructional approach.
