Texas Tech University

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Gamification in Higher Education

By Holley Baker, Instructional Designer

What is Gamification?

Gamification is generally defined as a system of learning that uses rewards-based or active-learning strategies in a non-game environment. Although the name was coined around 2010, the principles of gamification have been around for much longer. In fact, if your high school years were anything like mine, you will likely recall a Jeopardy-styled study session before an exam. To be honest, I cannot even remember what the winning team received as a reward from those games. However, I can recall having fun while learning about the economic pressures that led Franklin D. Roosevelt to introduce the New Deal into legislation. Compared to the rigorous curriculum in higher ed, this example may sound juvenile. But the basic premise of gamification, to increase your students' motivation and engagement with learning, does have a home in a higher ed setting.

Benefits of gamification

Some of the benefits of gamification include increased student engagement, greater retention of content, and intrinsic motivation toward future learning activities. You can activate these benefits through simple measures, such as awarding extra credit for utilizing campus resources like the Writing Center, or through a complex design with a leaderboard that rewards top performing students at the end of the semester. A rewards-based learning system encourages healthy competition among your students and will eventually lead to an intrinsic enjoyment of learning, without the rewards. Other benefits surface over time, as active learning strategies encourage them to take an active role in how they learn and how they search for answers to problems in your class and beyond.

Active learning strategies do not have to use rewards or badges to encourage your students. Another option that may fit your curriculum better is the use of problem-based activities, like real-world case studies and scenarios. Students can search for solutions to real-world problems in a low-stakes setting like your classroom or a discussion board online. Problem-based activities are effective because they go beyond asking students to memorize the actions a leader took in a historic case; they put the students in the leader's shoes and challenge them to learn why certain solutions work and why others do not. They can also foster a stronger sense of collaboration in group activities. Assigning your students to job-based roles within their teams will teach them the duties and teamwork requirements they will encounter later in their careers.

The benefits of gamification are well-defined but knowing how to implement these strategies in your own classes is not as clear cut. It takes planning, designing, developing, and evaluating your current classes for assignments which lend themselves to gamification. You do not have to revamp your entire curriculum, however, to bring the benefits of gamification to your students. I have offered some tips below to help you find ways, both small and large, to incorporate some of these strategies into your classroom.

How to identify opportunities for gamification in your class

Identify the pain points in your class. What do your students historically struggle with? Do they lack engagement with a particular chapter or section in your class? Are their written papers consistently full of grammar, spelling, and punctuation errors? Think back to each section and try to identify problems that arise every semester. These can be problems with particular content, assignments, or even times of the year when you notice that your students begin to lose their motivation.

Determine the desirable outcome. Now that you have identified some problem areas, focus on your ideal outcome. Do you want your students to improve their writing? Do you want your students to learn how to search for their own resources? Perhaps you want them to show their work when solving problems or cite their sources in their essays. Whatever your ideal outcome, write it down! This will help you determine how you can reward your students or incentivize the behavior you want to see from them.

Know your students and what motivates them. You know your students. You see them come to your class semester after semester, year after year, and you know what motivates them. Extra credit points may work for some, but the bragging rights from being at the top of your leaderboard may work for others. Understanding where your students struggle and where they thrive will help you determine what can motivate them.