mprovise

In higher education circles, we often talk about "meeting students where they are." Where many students are is in the magic circle of games. Card games, board games, video games, role-playing games...they all share a set of characteristics. And what I learned by studying games is that higher education shares many of those characteristics, too.

Gamification has shown to improve student engagement, motivation, and feelings of autonomy in education. Since systematically incorporating game elements into my own course, I have witnessed positive effects: Student attendance is more regular and the quality of their attention is better. Although students are allowed to leave writing workshops at will, many students use the entire block of time to work on their assignments. Student comments on course evaluations suggest that they feel greater autonomy about their learning experience and less anxiety about the grade they will earn. Best of all, questions about assignments tend to take the form of “What do I need to do to get this paper to ‘excellent’?” rather than "Why did I lose points?" (Motivation remains an elusive goal, though. Many students are still focused more on points than on developing mastery of professional communication skills, and students complain that the grade contract is too difficult to understand. A likely explanation is the format is just different than what they have come to expect and uncertainty makes them uncomfortable.