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In fulfillment of the requirements for EDUC 5863
TASK:
TASK:
Beyond Gamification
Building upon the questions in our class discussion, and your own interests, please write a critical/analytical piece (semi-formal) that articulates (and evaluates/responds to) some connections between the authors’ critique/s of gamification and schooling/education and the transformative opportunities of ‘play’.
How do Nolan & McBride’s position ‘autonomy, play, affinity, and space’ in relation to DGBL and institutionalized schooling practices and epistemologies (ways of knowing, meaning making, and/or assessing ‘knowledge’)? Or what are the opportunities in play in relation to what and how we learn more broadly through play? What do they wish to make visible for games research looking at meaningful learning?
PLAY, POWER, PROGRESS
PLAY, POWER, PROGRESS
When I consider gamification in the math classroom (or in general knowledge subjects), every digital example I can think of that uses game-like elements, maintains the explicit curriculum of power, progress, and identity. Knowledgehook uses levels and stars to reward students as they progress through the lessons; Kahoot and other quiz games reward speed or numbers of correct answers; Zorbits allows for customization of an avatar as students progress through multiple levels in the game. These three math game platforms represent the majority of math games that are currently available for students. As Wolf & Flewitt (2010) stated in Nolan & McBride, “institutional preoccupations with data and accountability are primarily focused on operational, skills-based technology use rather than its meaning-making potential and role in the development of multimodal literacies (595).”
Image from Nolan, J., & McBride, M. (2014)
These games harness the power of correct vs incorrect responses and value students’ ability to answer questions that have a predetermined correct answer. Knowledgehook, despite being relevant and current to the latest 2020 mathematics curriculum, allows students to gain stars and badges based on these correct answers. Games like Zorbits have a path for students to follow, and teachers can track the progression of correct answers with a teacher dashboard. Whether or not students are privy to this dashboard, the game’s mechanics fosters progress through the pathway’s completion. Prodigy and Classcraft allow for students to create custom avatars that can upgrade through the game’s progress. Students can express their identity through the digital purchase of clothing, styles, and upgrades that are available from the game’s correct-answer currency. The longer and more frequent students answer correctly, the more “money” they accumulate. The ability for students to share their custom avatars suggests their mathematical ability is reflected by the quality of those upgrades.
Do these upgrades and modifications to the original mechanic of “answering questions” provide enough of a learning motivation for students? Also noted in Nolan & McBride, “Castell and Jenson (2003a) contend, the true pedagogical and ludic spirit of learning with games ‘resides in the engagement itself and not in its extrinsically defined “learning outcomes”’ (595)” When games focus so much on power, progress, and identity in its explicit curriculum and game design, the other rhetorics of play (fate, frivolity, self, and imaginary) become extraneous and the teacher may consider those components distractors from the learning outcomes. Our school system and its emphasis on grading and sorting students will continue to promote power, progress, and identity in these games. Perhaps this de-emphasis on these hidden and null curricula permits game developers to focus solely on the power, progress, and identify rhetorics of play. What emerges then, however, is not a game that students want to play for play’s sake, but have to play for school’s sake. What seems engaging for students at the onset of an educational game becomes a mandatory digital tracking and practice device for teachers.
My hope is to see a mathematics game that makes the hidden and null curricula explicit. One where the player is subjected to random chance events that requires the student to understand unpredictability of problem solving; where the player can have fun to break the game in a flurry of frivolous experimentation; where the player sees an accurate reflection of their person-hood and the humanity of the game through cultural and community representations; where the player has the ability to design and invent through the process, effectively modifying the game to suit their needs. By dismantling the traditional hegemonic practices in mathematics education, students can play with the sandbox of numbers and numeracy skills in a variety of contexts that Bogost alludes to in his work, How to Do Things with Videogames.
References:
References:
Nolan, J., & McBride, M. (2014). Beyond gamification: Reconceptualizing game-based learning in early childhood environments. Information, Communication & Society.
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