Gamifying Education Reflection

I believe that gamifying education is a sensible approach to engaging students in learning, both in and out of the classroom. Nevertheless, it is sometimes difficult to rationally explain my beliefs to those unfamiliar with the concept. Considering the question "What things are important to remember to gamify education?" is a great place to start such an explanation.

To do so, let me outline three transcendent opportunities of effectively gamifying learning. I say transcendent because, when implemented appropriately, I believe that these opportunities can be present in any educational setting. They are 1) facilitation of learning, 2) enrichment of experiences, and 3) expansion of horizons.

When effective educational gaming happens and the above mentioned opportunities occur, learners are naturally engaged by the task at hand regardless of the overarching objective of teaching and learning taking place. Unlike traditional instructional delivery, the teaching and learning that happens in a gamified setting is fluid, meaning that both can take any number of directions and shapes depending on the relationships of the teacher and students with the content.

Ideally, gamifying learning takes the processes of exploration and discovery beyond the learning space in the form of tangential learning, or digging further into a concept that was introduced during the game because it caught the learner's attention and interest. There are a number of ways that tangential learning can be made possible, one of which is by placing referential object in games. Referential objects are items that have an identifiable reference to something outside of the game (a location, person, book, etc.). They are these that lead learners to bringing something from the gamified learning experience into their personal lives. Promisingly, they are these which also lead learners to bring something from their personal lives back into the gamified learning experiences.