The Gamification of Education – Use of Game Design Elements in Non-game Contexts – Infographic

What is gamification? Should parents and teachers find educational games and encourage kids to “play” to “learn”? Our team is pleased to share this infographic titled The Gamification of Education gamification.org, “Moving Learning Games Forward” by MIT Education Arcade.

Search Gamification of Education and these are statements you will find:

• Turns Class into a Game of Rewards and Instant Feedback.
• Education Gamification is here to change our future.
• Helps kids learn from what they do best – play.
• Engages students through a response system that offers educational exercises and games over a laptop or mobile device.
• Turns learning into a game.
• Improves Teacher-Student Interactions Online

“Games and game-like elements have begun to invade the real world. Gamification, defined as the use of game-mechanics, dynamics, and frameworks to promote desired behaviors, has found its way into domains like marketing, politics, health and fitness, with analysts predicting that it will become a multi-billion dollar industry by 2015.” (MacMillan, 2011). Now we can add Gamification has found its way in education also.

The Gamification of Education infographic has brought out a lot of views on this topic. Here are a valid comments:

• Games allow the students to fail at some stage and they need to find solutions to move on, I think this is an important point.

• A key element from Gamification that really helps and is easy to implement is adding a lot more milestones of victory/success. Games do this so well and a celebration of small milestones are very effective for learners with – lower self esteem, low motivation for learning in general and low initial competence in the subject materials.

• Games increase interactivity and rewards – Instead of just reading text, users are actually doing something and still going through the same content. Doing helps you remember what you have learned.

Do you think “The Gamification of Education” is the way to go? How will this help or hinder your own child?

Created by Knewton and Column Five Media