The gamification of education: Why playing is the future of learning

Gamification—the application of game design principles to non-gaming contexts—has gained a foothold in a wide variety of industries and disciplines, including one that may seem to be a very strange bedfellow indeed: the wide august field of learning.  

While many businesses are now adopting game mechanics to considerable effect, experts agree that students could also benefit from the gamification of education.

 

Online social learning platform Brainly has been using game elements to help students since 2009. Initially launched for Polish schoolchildren as “Zadane.pl”, Brainly has grown to over a dozen websites, with 26 million users across more than 35 countries.

 

One of those countries is the Philippines, as Brainly’s recent expansion into Asia has given rise to our very own Brainly.ph. Created for Filipino elementary and high school students, the website aims to provide homework assistance on subjects ranging from Science and Mathematics to Philippine History.

 

“Brainly’s main goal is to be a source of reliable knowledge and an important support for conventional education,” stated Monika Ambrozowicz, Brainly’s Community Manager for the Philippines. “We use elements of gamification, because thanks to them students are more engaged in learning and simply have fun.”

 

 

Homework help

 

Brainly.ph follows a question-and-answer format. Registration is free, and once a student has an account, they can spend points to post any homework-related questions on the site. Questions are categorized under their respective subjects (such as English or Geography), and are visible to everyone in the online community.

 

Answering questions rewards points; providing the best answer earns you bonus points.

 

Brainly.ph also utilizes ranking systems to reward users. These include rankings based on time (daily or weekly rankings), and one that attaches a special title to the user, like “Helping Hand”. Ranks depend on how much a user contributes to the community.

 

Users can invite other users to become friends, and exchange messages in the comments sections of posted questions. This allows social interactions between users, and enables them to discuss and collaborate on challenging problems.

 

Brainly collaborates with volunteers who moderate all interactions in the websites. Volunteers include active and retired teachers, professors, specialists, and fellow students.

 

“Attracting Filipino teachers is now one of our main goals and we are open to cooperation with them,” said Ambrozowicz.

 

 

 

 

The value of 'play' for students

 

According to Eric Klopfer, Scot Osterweil, and Katie Salen of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), the role of play is important for children, as it gives them the freedom to fail, experiment, and fashion identities.

 

“The starkly obvious difference between games and traditional schooling is that good games always involve play, and schooling rarely does,” they wrote.

 

Author and game designer Jane McGonigal offers that playing games has positive effects on human psychology.

 

 

“Students learn better by taking tests than by studying for tests,” said McGonigal. “Because when you take the test, you actually get real concrete feedback on what you know, what you don’t know. So essentially, being able to fail and get that feedback… actually helps you learn better. And of course that’s what happens in games.”

 

She observed that “allowing students to try, and fail, and have that not be a grade but rather an opportunity to learn and get better” is conducive to the learning process of students.

 

It is for these reasons that education could benefit from the incorporation of game elements.

 

The gamification of education

 

Ambrozowicz believes gamification introduces traditional education into the 21st century.

 

“Children nowadays spend so much time surfing the Internet,” she offered. “New technologies are so natural for both children and adults that they can greatly support education.”

 

Gamification also “increases engagement, as many people have a natural need for competition and reaching new levels. It is obvious that an engaged student will learn and achieve more than a bored one,” she said.

 

Others would agree with Ambrozowicz.

 

“When lessons are delivered in a game-like manner – that is, interactive, challenging, with instantaneous feedback – students easily remember them,” said Christine Rom, Game Developers’ Association of the Philippines (GDAP) board member and CEO of educational games developer PODD. “If we harness the elements that make these games interesting and integrate them into education, we get the opportunity to enhance the learning process.”

 

Gamification improves motivation. “By giving students a sense of achievement (through exciting rewards and recognition), students will be encouraged to learn and progress more,” explained Rom.

 

Komikasi Games and Entertainment CEO and GDAP board member Ria Lu expressed similar opinions: “The whole idea of gamification is to make a mundane process interesting by injecting game elements into it. And learning is certainly more effective when the learner actually enjoys it.”

 

Rom believes specific game mechanics work well in gamified education.

 

“At PODD, we combine various mechanics such as levels, achievements, bonuses, individual and group quests, leaderboards, and others in some of the educational games and virtual worlds we’ve created,” said Rom. “One particular feature that worked was giving students/players group objectives, and rewarding them based on their achievement as a group. This encouraged students to collaborate and help each other.”

 

Lu suggested another game element that could prove useful – story.

 

“It’s actually story that makes the learning stick,” she stated. “If you want a certain understanding, a certain way of thinking, to stick, use story… the interaction part of the game immerses them (the students) in that story.”

 

The challenges of gamifying education

 

There are challenges to effectively gamifying education, however.

 

In their paper, “Gamification in Education: What, How, Why Bother?”, Joey Lee and Jessica Hammer argued: “If we are to improve the odds of gamification providing value to schools, we must carefully design gamification projects that address the real challenges of schools, that focus on the areas where gamification can provide the maximum value.”

 

“I don’t think gamification is well understood yet, even in countries with more mature education systems,” said Rom. “When implemented without proper planning, it can be disadvantageous and can cause even more confusion.”

 

Sebastian Deterding of Hamburg University believes gamification’s use of points, badges, leaderboards, and the like do not necessarily make a particular activity fun or engaging in the way a well-designed game would.

 

Gamification could also lead to a preoccupation with “fake achievement”, or, according to Lee and Hammer, “teach students that they should learn only when provided with external rewards.”

 

“The purpose of the whole learning process might become about enjoying oneself,” echoed Lu. “It might give the kids the idea that if something is not fun, it’s not worth doing.”

 

Lu also believes we should not forget about the teachers: “Many teachers nowadays lose enjoyment in class… It’s also good to consider engaging the teachers, make them enjoy the whole process as well… Find out what their ‘kiliti’ is and come up with a game mechanic that utilizes that.”

 

As for Brainly, some teachers are worried that students are simply using it to copy each others’ homework. There is also the concern of students copying and pasting their answers from sites such as Wikipedia.

 

Though Brainly has yet to find the perfect solution for these issues, one of the moderators’ responsibilities is to ensure these things don’t happen.

 

“All kinds of cheating, and copying answers from either other users or from the Internet, are against Brainly’s terms of use,” explained Ambrozowicz. “Our moderators are constantly supervising the content and removing those answers that break the rules.”

 

 

Paving the way

 

The concept of Brainly was inspired in part by CEO and co-founder Michal Borkowski’s own university experience. He realized learning was more effective when students worked on material together in formal study groups.

 

“I wanted to capture the best qualities of that university learning experience and bring it to middle and high school all over the world – I certainly could have used a site like Brainly when I was studying high school physics,” he told Forbes.

 

Borkowski believes Brainly gives schoolchildren a platform that allows them to understand and learn complex concepts using their own “language”, as opposed to the often-intimidating lexicon of teachers.

 

“Sometimes all it takes to understand a complicated problem is to see and hear it broken down in a slightly different way than how the teacher or textbook explained it to you,” he said.

 

The decision to expand into the Philippines with Brainly.ph was made over a year ago. With the surge in popularity of iOS and Android devices, there are also plans to release Brainly.ph as a mobile application.

 

“Filipinos are known for their hard work, ambition, and deep interest in new technologies, social media, gadgets etc.,” said Ambrozowicz. “We strongly believed, and still believe, that they will enjoy Brainly, and the current engagement of our users shows that it turned out to be true.” — TJD, GMA News