Welcome to the final official part of our Gamification blog, where we finally talk about actual games.

As I mentioned in the introduction, using actual games is not central to the gamifying of education. A gamified classroom focuses on the repackaging of classroom elements to make them more encouraging to the students–NOT necessarily games. However, many popular games can be repackaged as well, and used in the classroom as a way to introduce content in an engaging way.

Need an example? Back in 2011, multiple small movements around the US were using the popular Portal games in their physics classes. These movements argued that due to their highly realistic depictions of gravity, acceleration, and force, levels in Portal were an ideal platform to teach students about Newton’s laws of motion. The website Teach with Portals even took this argument a step further, publishing lesson plans and activities centered on the game’s story and mechanics. The website includes lesson plans for math, game design, and even one for ELA!

This is one extreme example, but many others can be extrapolated from here. For example, English classes with units on writings other than novels might want to include an opportunity for students to do a ‘book report’ on their favorite video game’s story and themes. History classes could benefit from a guided playthrough of games like Civilization 5 or Oregon Trail (yes, that Oregon Trail) while art students could draw inspiration from indie titles like Journey.  Those same kids can then create works of art in the Minecraft universe.  Heck, you could find a video game for almost every possible subject—games like the WiiFit are practically made for PE classes!

These examples work because they take advantage of the same thing that makes well-incorporated gamification work–games are fun. Because they are already engaging, these games can become a huge incentive for students to get involved in a lesson. In addition, games often present content in an immediate real-world context, that kids can understand on an instinctive level. Finally, the act of playing a game forces students to take initiative and actively engage with content, which makes them more likely to remember the content than if they are passively absorbing data. (There’s a reason people who were students in the 90’s remember what the Oregon Trail was like, long after they’ve forgotten every date they ever memorized).

If you need more evidence, the entire video game market proves that millions of our students already enjoy playing these games, and play them voluntarily.

If educators can take advantage of that and help students learn while they play, then fun and education merge and push our kids further without ever feeling like work.  This, in a nutshell, is the entire point of gamification: making education more like games, games into educational moments, and kids into active, engaged, motivated members of the classroom.

As always, there’s a few guidelines teachers might want to consider before going out and buying a class Playstation.

1. Game inclusion needs to be carefully structured.

While your students will immediately want to dive into the game, you’ll have to make sure they’re playing them in a way that will be conductive to what you want them to learn. In some games, you may want to restrict access to a certain part of the game that does not serve your purpose.  I’m going to use Teach with Portals as an example of this.  The curriculum for this program is NOT paired with the regular story levels of the game; rather, it is paired with custom levels designed to facilitate the content in each lesson plan. This customization eliminates extra distractions in each level, and allowed the elements the teacher wants to focus on to shine.

If this is a possibility in your game, consider roping off your students into the desired portion of whatever game you choose, then leaving them free to explore the space you’ve provided. If the game is smaller, or doesn’t provide you with the ability to create those limits, make sure to pair it with an activity that will keep your students focused on the task at hand–even with the fun parts of the game right at their disposal.
One example I’ve heard of recently comes from a history teacher acquaintance, who allowed his students to play video game critic with the Assassin’s Creed series. Students could submit papers comparing and contrasting elements of the story’s historical events to actual history, analyzing whether the game’s developers portrayed periods like Renaissance Italy or the American colonies accurately. The activity let them play through the normal game, but then asked them to think critically about their gaming experience, even comparing it against their textbooks and other resources.

You don’t have to be that complex when you start, obviously–sometimes an activity as simple as a worksheet will serve–but this kind of story shows where this kind of structuring and careful framing of games can lead.

2. Consider your curriculum–and your hardware.

Always remember that the games you bring into the classroom should serve your curriculum–NOT the other way around! Choosing a game first, then trying to build your academic year around it, is a limiting direction and can serve to make your curriculum rather disjointed. Rather, you should start by knowing what your content is, THEN start browsing your game library.
One last example with Teach with Portals–while the movement has some wonderful lessons, building an entire ELA curriculum around the game would be difficult at best. English teachers might want to look elsewhere for games that suit their needs–sprinkling a few portals in as a treat.

Likewise, educators should know what physical tools their classroom has before setting their heart on a game. Classrooms without available working computers or mobile devices may have difficulty finding games that will work reliably. While I mentioned Civ V as a positive example for gaming in the history classroom, the hardware demands of its software might put it out of reach for a school with limited computer access. This kind of environment might want to look at non-digital games instead, or look for simple online games that don’t need the most advanced toys to play.

A good place to start your search is the Internet–as a repository of easy-to-play free educational games, you can’t beat it. Some good websites to start your search include KnowledgeAdventure, the BrainPOP spinoff GAMEUP, and the previously-mentioned Mangahigh platform. If you’re the kind of teacher who wants to bring the old-fashioned educational games back, the Internet Archive might be a good place to look as well–after all, they’re the ones who brought back Oregon Trail. Our friends in the Extra Credits team have also compiled their own list of educational games available on the Steam gaming community, which is definitely worth a look.

And finally, Make sure your inclusion is fun. As so many gamers and game designers know, if a game isn’t fun, people simply won’t play it. As a result, if your student’s won’t play, they won’t learn. If you choose a game that feels more like work than like play, then you miss the point of both games and gamification–which defeats the purpose of looking to games in the first place. 

We hope you enjoyed this series! As a wrap up, we’d like to include a short list of resources we’ve found helpful when researching the use of gamification in the classroom, which should be coming up as a conclusion to this series in the next couple of weeks. It should include theoretical discussions, useful platforms, and more–including some stuff we haven’t discussed in the main series!
As always, we’d love to hear your own ideas and experiences with games and gamification in the comments. Thank you for joining us!

Part 1: Introduction
Part 2: Pavlov and Classroom Management
Part 3: Rethinking the Grading Process
Part 4: Class Systems in the Classroom
Part 5: Games and Curriculum
Part 6: Conclusion and Resource List