Gamified Teaching...

Including recreational activities as part of education system has proved time and again its impact on psychological state of mind of pupil which leads to excitement and brings out the feeling of one being proud for an accomplishment.

Howard’s Multiple Intelligence speaks of using any and every way in which you can reach a child’s mind. The most difficult task for an educator in current day’s time is to keep the attendees motivated and involved.  Gamification can work out to be the best tool of education delivery as it can accentuate the user experience thus elevating the level of interactivity and practice.

Gamification, in its strictest form, is applying game like mechanics to existing content. What this means is that you add things like points, levels, leaderboards, badges, etc. to your existing content to make it more interactive and improve user experience.

Now the question that arises is how to apply Gamification? The answer to the same lies in the following points

§  Add points to tasks that need to be completed

§  Define badges/rewards to be given out after a criteria is met

§  Create a Leaderboard to show top performers

§  Define levels to repeat tasks or to perform harder tasks

§  Earning of badges can be tied to unlocking higher levels

Depending on the requirement one or more of these can be applied.

A caution!

Before applying this concept the only thing which we need to apprehend is the contrast between Games and Gamification.

The following table lists the differences between an actual Game and Gamification

Game	Gamification
Games have defined rules & objectives	May just be a collection of tasks with points or some form of reward
There is a possibility of losing	Losing may or may not be possible because the point is to motivate people to take some action and do something.
Sometimes just playing the game is intrinsically rewarding	Being intrinsically rewarding is optional.
Games are usually hard and expensive to build	Gamification is usually easier and cheaper
Content is usually morphed to fit the story and scenes of the game	Usually game like features are added without making too many changes to your content

So let’s try to reach our young learners in a way they want us to.

About the Author:
The Author is Ms. Sumita Gupta, Coordinator Blooming Buds Play School
www.bloomingbudsmws.com