How Gamification and Technology Enhance Student Learning

Kyra DeLoach

Minecraft Image from WIX

When I think of the word assessment, I always think it has to be something after. When watching the video ‘4 Ways to Gamify your Classroom to Engage Students’ from ClassPoint about gamification and education, it hit me— technology can be used for assessment at any time during the learning process.

In the example given, Sara from ClassPoint talks about sending out a survey to your learners before implementing games or the concepts of games into your lessons in the classroom. I don’t know why I typically have only thought to survey after to see what has been learned. To make things learner focused feedback is crucial.

When I think about gamification, I only think about taking a video game and doing it physically for example Mario Kart: running around outside in cardboard boxes. However, I have learned the gamification of education is more about using the concepts that students enjoy or can’t get enough of from certain video games. The example in the video of Minecraft promoting ‘creativity’ and ‘choosing your own path’ is what made it truly click for me.

Minecraft is used as a prime example when you read about gamification because of its huge success. In Connected Gaming : What Making Video Games Can Teach Us About Learning and Literacy it states, “What the story and success of Minecraft surely signals to us is a vision of connected gaming, where playing and making games is coming together rather than being apart.” I believe this is a great example of what we want: learners feeling connected to what they are interacting with and being connected and coming together.

Additionally, I realized that I have done many systems using gamification to assess my students. For example, we had an event where we printed out a ton of different QR codes. Some of the QR codes had funny videos or pages where there was a meme but students needed to find the QR code that led them to a survey, this was part of a scavenger hunt for students to see who could answer the questions about sexual health for the possibility of winning goodie bags with free contraceptives.

By using a scavenger hunt, or a quest not only did I game a phi the experience which motivated my students to look for the information, I did assess what they knew about sexual health. I look forward to the ways I can continue to use these strategies, like using a leaderboard for continuing quests, or whatever game concepts my students teach me about after surveying.

Technology and assessment are so much more than using Google Forms or a Scantron. While I think there is so much value in personal feedback and assessment, I think technology can be used with many strategies and in so many different ways for assessment and be just as if not more effective in some situations.

References

ClassPoint. (2022, June 6). 4 ways to gamify your classroom to engage students [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-UXsuofrUdk

Yasmin B. Kafai, & Quinn Burke. (2016). Connected Gaming : What Making Video Games Can Teach Us About Learning and Literacy. The MIT Press.