Learning Through Gamification
A Blend of Fun, Engagement, and Achievement...
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I recently watched this TED Talk by Luis Von Ahn, co-founder and CEO of Duolingo. Duolingo is a language-learning platform and the most downloaded education app worldwide. It has 74.1 million monthly active users from 119 countries.
The talk had interesting contributions (such as what were the criteria for starting a language learning app, or where Guatemala -the country of origin of the founder, and mine! -, is on the world map🙄). It mainly focused on how they use gamification to keep learners coming back. And that’s the learning format we’re exploring today.
📰 What’s the format?
Gamification. Gamification is the process of adding game elements or mechanics to an experience to increase engagement or enjoyment. These game elements are usually separated from the actual learning content.
Gamified lessons or activities may include elements such as badges, leaderboards, timed activities, rewards or points.1
🎛️ What are the features?
Gamification is about changing behavior (not necessarily about changing knowledge2).
Features that can change behavior include:
Competition
Cooperation
Chance
Risk
Clear Objectives
Rules
Points
Levels
Leaderboards
Feedback
Streaks
Not every learning experience has every element. They usually have a combination.
💡 Why is it effective for learning?
Gamification is effective for learning when it’s backed up by sound instructional theories such as:
Scaffolding: This technique helps move a learner from his or her current level of knowledge to the next logical level. Examples include hints, checklists, clues, prompts, and parsing content into small units to aid learning.
Extrinsic Motivation: Is when a person is motivated to undertake an activity simply to earn a reward or to avoid punishment.
Intrinsic Motivation: Is when a person is motivated by internal factors. Intrinsic motivation comes from mastering new content, feeling a sense of accomplishment, and having a sense of control over your own actions3.
Spaced Practice: Studying a little bit of content at a time over a long period of time rather than cramming the content all at once.
Testing: The more times the learner recalls information or content, the easier it is for the learner to recall it in the future. Repetition makes recall easier.
Episodic Memory: Memories tied to strong emotions of the learner and are recalled through association with a particular time or place and tend to be vivid as they are recalled.
Note: Some of these techniques are consistent with Barbara Oakley’s list of Top 10 Ideas to Help Your Learning (interleave, space out your learning, test yourself, and use metaphors to speed your learning…)
In a Nutshell: Some Benefits of Gamification
Incentivizes and accelerates learning
Provides transparency into goals and expectations
Highlights and reinforces desired behaviors
Engages learners in meaningful decision making
Offers real-time feedback
🥁 Recommendations
There’s something I need to admit. To me, the most interesting part of Luis Von Ahn’s TED Talk was after it finished! On minute 12:04, the Head of curation at TED asked him how he can apply his ideas about learning languages to other subjects. Here’s what he answers:
“Most things that you can learn through repetition, you can actually gamify and turn into something like Duolingo […] It's a little harder for things like explanations…”4
If you’re thinking of gamifying a learning experience, it could be helpful to determine if you’re teaching something that can be learned through repetition… If not, you might look into other alternatives (check out this post with some ideas):
Two Frameworks to use Gamification
Since gamification is about changing behavior, here are a couple of frameworks that can help you design with that in mind:
Framework #1: Octalysis Framework
The Octalysis Framework is a gamification tool designed by Yu-kai Chou5 that identifies and analyses the eight core human drives that motivate behavior. It’s visualized as an octagon, with each side representing a different motivator, such as accomplishment, empowerment, social influence, and unpredictability.
Chou’s thesis is that when there are none of these 8 core drivers behind a desired action, there is zero motivation and no action takes place.
Framework #2: The Make-It Toolkit
Terry Pearce, whose work we deeply admire here at TeamLogiQ, came up with an interesting way to use an existing behavioral design tool as a framework for playful learning design and creation.
The Make-it Toolkit provides fifteen avenues for tweaking any kind of design (not just learning design) to make it work with the behavioral preferences of human beings. Terry took a few of them and applied them to learning:
🏷 Summary
We explored the concept of gamification in learning, drawing inspiration from a TED Talk by Luis Von Ahn, co-founder and CEO of Duolingo. We delved into how gamification involves adding game elements to learning experiences to boost engagement and enjoyment.
Key aspects of gamification include features like competition, cooperation, risk, and clear objectives, which are instrumental in changing learner behavior. We also examined how gamification's effectiveness is backed by instructional theories such as scaffolding, motivation, spaced practice, testing, and episodic memory.
📚 Further Readings
The mind of a player: using motivational models in gamification (by Terry Pearce)
Octalysis Tool in action
Mary-Jo Leroux’s YouTube channel on Effective Gamification
Ingredients for Motivation (by the LxD Lab)
👉 Coming Up Next
Stay tuned for our next post about AI Tutors, where we'll explore the balance between personalized learning and the invaluable experience of community-based education…
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In case this distinction is useful: in gamification, the game components are added to the traditional instruction method, whereas in game-based learning, for example, the game is the learning experience.
Explorable Explanations might be a better format for changing knowledge.
Both intrinsic and extrinsic motivation coexist in many learning settings.
He then went on to say that those kinds of things are going to require some really good videos, which honestly was kind of disappointing… I’ll write more on that soon…
Yu-Kai Chou has publicized a list of 90 case studies with gamification examples.