Thoughts on Game Based Learning and Gamifying the Classroom

I started this blog eight years ago as part of my master's program. As it changed over the years, I drifted quite a bit from my initial purpose of sharing my classroom games on it.

Of course, the ed-tech landscape has changed a lot since 2011. In my district at the time we had just installed a big round of interactive whiteboards. Only one or two teachers had an iPad. I had never touched a Chromebook and no school I knew of was using Google Apps for Education (as we called them when they first came along).

A decline in classroom games on interactive whiteboards is just a part of the overall trend I've seen in recent years. It's been a gradual shift away from the bells and whistles with more emphasis on the learning. Even though I'm a game designer and even though I had a blast in those years using those bells and whistles for fun projects, the shift toward effective use of tech for deeper learning has always been my real passion.

After returning from Michigan's largest ed-tech conference in March, I was thrilled to tweet this observation. 

The best thing for me about the sessions I attended at #macul19 was the focus on instruction, relationships and culture instead of the tech tools. Tech can support and amplify the things that matter most.

— Mike Petty (@mpetty39) March 24, 2019

But what does this changing landscape mean for a blog with "classroom games" right in the title? Will it necessarily be a thing of the past? I sure hope not!

As we know, right along with the other changes in the ed-tech landscape, we have heard more about gamifying the classroom or game based learning. I actually stayed away from those terms on this blog for the most part, at least in any formal sense. But now as trends change and my blog title stays the same, I figured I'd touch on them directly.

Defining the Terms

Some people have mistakenly referred to gamification of the classroom and game based learning as if they're the same thing. Gamification can be a form of game based learning, but it doesn't have to be. I'll define them this way:

• Game Based Learning - Using a game to teach a specific topic.
• Gamification of the Classroom - Using elements of successful games to increase student motivation and engagement.

So if I have students play an online game about genetics to learn about basic terms and concepts, that's Game Based Learning (GBL). In these cases the students could tell you the game they played and what they learned about the topic at hand after participating in the lesson. Though I often didn't use the term and didn't always specify the learning objectives, most of my games highlighted on this site lend themselves to these types of lessons.

Gamification, on the other hand, just borrows elements from games that make them fun and uses that in the classroom. So maybe we take something like leveling up, getting a new avatar or scoring points and we make ways to do that in science class over the course of a marking period. It might be giving students digital badges for meeting specific objectives. We don't necessarily stop and play a game to learn, but the lesson or the overall progression through the course might feel more like a game.

My Observations

After years of experimenting with these two concepts in classrooms, here are some general observations I've made:

• Students definitely learn from playing games. The challenge (and it's a big one) is to get them to learn what you want them to. I love games and I love playing them in school. They can be a distraction from the content, though, and any actual learning in that regard often is superficial.
• I maintain that gamification in education is nothing new. School has, in a sense, always been a game. What else can we call it when the players acquire points and earn scores, hoping for credit that at best abstractly reflects their knowledge and skills? One can cheat at chess and on a math test. When I would write my syllabus for high school math, I couldn't deny it felt a lot like writing rules for my game designs. So school has always been gamified. The problem is it hasn't been a very fun game. In fact by today's standards, where gaming outside of school is a huge industry grabbing the hearts and minds of so many of our kids, it's laughable to think of year-long courses and rewards of letter grades as parts of a game anyone would want to play. 
• So it isn't gamification that's new, it's that we have learned new things from modern, more engaging games.
• I have not been a fan of gamification, because it's essentially about extrinsic rewards. Certainly badges, upgraded avatars and grading systems based on big scores are more exciting than working for that A- in math. In the end, though, it's tacked on. Call me idealistic, but I still long for the day students will be excited about learning the subject because it can better their lives.
• While I don't embrace gamification as an approach to teaching, my experience with and study of it point to four very important elements of an engaging, effective learning experience. These same things come out of research that has nothing to do with games. So it's not the games that bring the magic to a good lesson. It's just that game designers have put that magic to use more effectively than most teachers have. The four elements are:
• A clear goal - Effective teachers make sure the students know where they are headed overall in their learning and what the goal is in the current lesson.
• Student agency - Students can have some choice and control in how they reach the goal (and possibly in how they show they reached the goal). 
• Appropriate challenges - Each student is learning at the point he or she needs to be learning. It's not too hard and it's not too easy.
• Timely, actionable feedback - The learner finds out quickly if he or she is on track and gets some information on how to get back on track when needed.

So there are a few statements about games on my blog about classroom games. Maybe that will provide fertile soil for further on-topic posts in the months ahead! If not, at least I had the foresight to put "and tech" in the title.

Going the distance where it counts

Transformation begins by asking the right questions.

Some people use what I call "checklist thinking". In my line of work, that means I talk about a teaching technique and they tell me whether or not they do that. (And of course the answer is usually affirmative.)

PBL? CHECK!

Formative assessment? CHECK!

I describe an ideal, they see some piece of it that looks something they did. "Yep, I do that."

But it's too simple to approach life as a series of yes/no questions.

A better question is often, "How much do you use...?" I call this a yardstick approach. It raises the question of measuring and differences in results.

• With it we acknowledge a distance between minimal practice and effective application. 
• We can start to assess where we are at. 
• We can identify important aspects that make results poor, good and best. 
• We can begin to identify steps to improve.

Checklist thinking leads to mediocrity. Yardstick thinking leads to growth.

As a last thought, I'll add that checklist thinking isn't all bad. I assure you I use it frequently, like when I mow my lawn and when I send a reminder email about a printer issue to our district tech. Is that done? CHECK!

Obviously we can't start rating ourselves on a scale for everything. The areas in our lives where we use the yardstick approach, though, are the areas we value most whether we admit it or not. The trick is to acknowledge our priorities and then evaluate the efforts accordingly.

Four Tips I Learned in the 2013 - 2014 School Year

I just finished up 20 years in my career in education. Many times I said it was my best year yet. I saw students get excited about using their talents and pursuing their dreams. I worked with some great teachers who were stretched and who stretched me. I received heartfelt thanks from administrators, colleagues, students and a few people who encountered my work online or at conferences where I presented.

I also had some setbacks. Several teachers took action through the local union in response to a professional development program I had been excited to share. This year also marked my sixth full year as an instructional tech coordinator. In evaluating overall growth of the staff over this time, I had to face some harsh facts. Not everyone has been following where I'm supposed to be leading. I have to claim responsibility for my shortcomings and oversights in that area.

In reflecting on the highlights and challenges, I came up with these four main lessons I found.

Teach like an artist.
Just before school started last year I wrote a blog post about some parallels I see in teaching and creating art. It struck a chord with some teachers and it fueled my passion for months afterward as I put the principles into practice.

In short, it is my way of staying inspired so I can inspire. It involves chasing a vision. Pushing through all the fear, risk and doubt, we do what it takes to make that vision real in our classrooms and for our students. Everything I learned and continue to learn about this shows up at my new blog.

It's OK to learn together.
I worked with a few teachers this year on ambitious first time projects. They made for quite an adventure. Either I or the teacher started things off saying something like, "This is the first time any of us have tried this, so we're not sure what to expect. We need your help."

Contrast that with the classroom environment most of us grew up with. In the past the teacher was the expert in the room. He or she had the answers. The game was to guess what was in the teacher's head. I consciously made it a goal in my writing to simply tell the teacher what she had told us. I knew it would earn the A. And why shouldn't it? There was comfort in certainty. The right answer was known and had been spoken.

But now the only certainty is that there's more to know. This is not just true in the classroom, but everywhere. When the goal is to do better, the learning never ends. The comfort of knowing right answers is gone.

This year the students I worked with saw me turn to Google more than ever when it came to a new tech obstacle we encountered. I had to take notes and tell them I'd look for solutions after class. I had to admit I was stumped. I had to thank students for finding an answer before I did.

Giving up my "expert at everything" status is still uncomfortable at times. It is hopeless to perpetuate the illusion, though, and it is far more important to model good learning strategies.

Go with the goers.
There's nothing fresh or insightful in this thought on its own. It's obvious that personal growth takes place most when we surround ourselves with others who are growing. I most recently reflected on this, though, when I read Jeff Goins' blog about what makes a great leader. Quoting one of his mentors, he put it that way: Go with the goers.

I will add only two thoughts here. First, it might be easier for writers and speakers to hang out only with the movers and doers as they share their insights with those who pay to hear what they have to share. Those of us in education are paid to reach everyone, though, and that means we also have to stay in touch with those who are not yet goers.

And I also have to speak to the power of connection and my virtual PLN. Going with the goers is a lot easier now when we can almost continually be in touch with experts online. I learned so much this year skimming recent blogs in Feedly and finding wisdom and best practices on Twitter. This year more than ever my online presence transitioned to face to face meetings. I was able to see the reach to which my thinking was bound and I found help in stretching beyond that.

Find strength in personal growth.
I rarely hear this advice offered, yet I had to return to it a lot this year when it was tough to go on. I hear my colleagues turn to any number of hobbies and (more or less jokingly) chemicals to recharge amid the stress of the school year. I want to submit this additional option:  Take strength in measuring your progress toward your personal potential.

I know it can sound very prideful to point this out, especially within the circumstances and conversation in the teachers' lounge. I can only say there's a strong spiritual element in this for me and I see the insight, practice and the strength I find in its truth to be a gift. It is with gratitude and humility, not my own ability, that I return and rely on the blessing.

Lifelong learning is a process of becoming who we were meant to be. The journey will be necessarily difficult. There's nothing innately wrong with recharging through moments of recreation, but let's remember when there's no time for that, fulfillment of purpose and further steps toward our potential provide deep peace and energy necessary to continue.

As teachers (the lead learners) we should know this best and pass the lesson along to our students.

Along those lines, I'll end with a suggestion to all teachers: Take a few hours to reflect on what you gained this past school year. If you write anything online, please share it in the comments.

Raising Questions

New for 2014: Follow the continuing Teaching Like an Artist series on TeachingLikeanArtist.com.

Art is life shining through and the artist is someone who gets good at letting it. When life shines through, it catches attention. 

People wonder at it. 

They wonder about it.

Artists raise questions. From where they stand, they see what others don’t. They express thoughts and emotions in surprising, new ways.

And if they don’t ask the questions themselves, they lead us to a place where we must do the asking.

What does that mean?
How did she do that?
Why didn’t I think of that?
You too?

He did what?
What's next?

To learn is to realize there is more to learn - that there is much to wonder about. Deep curiosity oozes interesting questions.

What questions did I raise for my students today? What questions did I inspire them to ask me, themselves and others?

Degrees of Tech Use in Education

I've been working on this thought for awhile, but the missing piece came from a simply stated insight from Terry Heick in this short interview. He said his advice to teachers regarding tech integration would be:

"Think of it as a learning tool, not a teaching tool."

It's my job to help teachers infuse more technology into their instruction and that is too often hindered by a misunderstanding of terms. It is easy for some teachers to say they integrate technology because they use their interactive whiteboards and students play on Study Island in the lab.

But technology use in education has to be seen as a spectrum, not a yes-no question as to whether a computer is on in the classroom.  I'm sure some of the distinctions I make below would not matter in all schools, but here is the image and terminology I will begin using as I teach teachers.



Of course, my goal is to help every teacher to take the next step toward the innovation end of the spectrum. First, I want them to identify where their instruction would fall on the scale most days using this criteria:

• Teacher use - The technology is in the teacher's hands and it is essential for her to do her job. Examples - Lesson in PowerPoint projected in front of the room, lesson plans done in a calendar shared with the principal, grading program
• Student use - Students need to use technology to complete the lesson. Examples - Watch Khan Academy videos at home, find the assignment in Edmodo, read the article in Newsela
• Integration - This is the important distinction for me because I am working toward integration of content objectives and technology skills. Here students can't complete the lesson without learning a new technology skill. Examples of this could look like student use above, but the difference is the teacher designed the learning so most or all students will use a new tool in a new way to learn a new skill. The step in tech skills has to be small enough that it enhances rather than distracts from the learning of the content.
• Innovation - Here the teacher is using the technology to design learning experiences no one else has used before. This is exciting, but difficult work. It stems from a high degree of digital literacy in which the teacher thinks creatively with the technology, expressing herself through the blend of her unique personality and broad range of personal experiences.

Two thoughts:

• Each level is a spectrum as well. There are levels of tech integration and levels of innovation. The idea of what counts as "new" can relate more or less to the teachers and students themselves, the district as a whole or possibly the world.
• I will be thrilled to have all teachers at the Integration stage. Innovation is vital and I believe passionate teachers will automatically move in that direction. We need innovators leading the way, both in the world at large and within our districts. However, students acquiring appropriate tech skills within the context of content are a lessons is exciting.

If this becomes an effective tool in our district I will follow up with some examples.