Overview

Gamification is becoming an increasingly popular concept in teaching. Today's "digital residents" have grown up with video and computer games, and they look for excitement. The fast pace of many games fits their short attention spans. The concept of "gamification" - using game elements in non-game contexts to motivate and persuade - is moving from marketing to teaching. While games have long been part of a language teacher's bag of tricks, teachers can benefit from learning about the elements of games that will help us appeal to today's learners.

The page on Game Mechanics offers a description of several of the game mechanics that could be used in the classroom, while the Games and Gamified Activities page points out ways that game mechanics can be added to specific classroom actions.

Once you have a sense of what gamification is, the Class Gamification worksheet can help you put it into practice.

The Resources page provides references and links to additional reading, including a download of my brief article on the difference between gamification and game-based learning.

A new addition: I uploaded a prior detailed course description to Claude.ai and asked it to create the points for me. Here is the original; and what Claude came up with first, then what it came up with when I asked for badges and levels. It needs tweaking, but it goes a long way toward dealing with points and percentages. And great gamified feel to the way Claude named things. Hmmm...

Recent presentations (see links below; many more on the Resources page)

2026 Healey Gamification Resources 

2021 NCTE workshop "Gamifying your class: Why and how" - PPT in PDF form

2021 AE Live workshop resources