Sunday, May 24, 2020

In feedback from my students, one of the things they most seem to enjoy are the gamified online learning environments that I create for them. When I think of online learning environments, I think about the online settings that students can explore or even manipulate in order to gather information or learn. Digital escape rooms are a great example. Google Classroom could be an example. Websites are online learning environments. The Bitmoji Classrooms that are all the rage right now could be considered online learning environments if they host learning materials! As a lover of teaching and video games, I have a bit of an obsession creating online learning environments that have game components. Today's experiment is about how to turn boring content delivery into an engaging online learning adventure!

Experiment Rating 1-5 (5 being Ultimate Teacher Happiness)

Ease of Implementation: 3/5 (moderately easy to implement)

Cost: 5/5 (free!)

Tech Rating: 4/5 (somewhat tech-heavy, depending on the platforms you choose to use)

Enhances the Learning Environment: 5/5 (learners actively and independently or cooperatively explore new content)


The Question

When I made the switch to middle school, I learned a hard lesson. Middle schoolers really struggle to stay engaged during traditional instruction. While I wouldn't say that I was a "regular" lecturer in my high school teaching days, I would definitely say that I front-loaded necessary background information for each of my units through lecture. As the years went by I tried to make my lectures more interactive and engaging, but sometimes all I had was a pig in a wig. When I started teaching middle schoolers, even a dancing pig in a wig wasn't cutting it. But you know what they did love? Review games! That was, hands-down, the favorite activity. I always loved making review games anyway, and my students blossomed during opportunities for them to compete. Then I created my first digital breakout game, and the kids were obsessed with it! They loved exploring the breakout website, searching for clues, and analyzing the set-up of the game. I saw students collaborate, research, and learn as I never had before. After the breakout game was over, I knew I had to continue to channel this energy, but I also knew that too much of a good thing can be a bad thing. If I made a breakout game at the end of every single unit, the kids would eventually get burnt out. Also, I was using my breakout games like I used review games. They were used after the learning should have taken place. With all of this in mind, this was my question: how can I take the most boring (for my students) parts of my units and make them as engaging and fun as the review games?


The Research

Joselowsky (2007) writes, "It is increasingly clear that learning to high standards cannot take place if students are in schools where they are anonymous, where they feel no stake in the life of the school and classroom... where students are bored, have no opportunities for experiential learning... or have limited opportunities for group or extracurricular activities" (p. 258). Sanacore (2008) found that learners are more apt to be motivated and engaged and, as a result, are likely to improve their academic achievement, when their interests and preferences are incorporated into a curriculum. If we want students to increase our students' interest and independence in learning, we need to foster intrinsic motivation. We can do this by creating a learning environment that is both encouraging and challenging. Sanacore (2008) wrote, "Reluctant learners, in particular, thrive on a balance of being praised for specific accomplishments and challenged to attain high expectations" (p. 41).


Hypothesis

When taking my own question and the research into consideration, one thought that came to mind time and again was the way video games utilize this balance of praise and challenge. Think about it! Video games build in lots of little wins, especially early on. This creates confidence in the gamer and gives us a little blast of dopamine that makes us feel good. Then the video game begins to incrementally increase in difficulty. We experience challenge, but we've had a taste of success and we want more of that, so we keep at it until we succeed again! Here was my hypothesis: I can provide students with an online learning environment that utilizes game components to motivate their learning.


The Experiment/Procedure

Gamified online learning environments can take many forms and serve many purposes! They can be used to provide context at the beginning of a unit, teach a skill, share resource materials, provide content or skills review, and even serve as a formative assessment tool. This procedure for designing an online learning environment featuring game components is flexible and can be used for a variety of purposes. The end product is an online setting where students can (and want to!) learn or review information.


Step 1: Identify the purpose. As with all good educational strategies, knowing your purpose is key. The purpose is why the learning that you want to take place is important. Remember, the purpose isn't an "I want to..." thing. Sorry, teachers, but this isn't really about you. It's about your students. What do you want your students to know, understand, or be able to do? Here are some examples of purposes I have established for some of my own online learning environments:

  • Students can practice a variety of ELA skills that they will use during ILEARN testing.

  • Students will work on desirable 21st century skills such as collaboration, communication, and creative thinking.

  • Students will be able to check their reading comprehension on two short stories and one poem.

  • Students can learn about the different types of figures of speech.

Get very clear on what the purpose of this online learning environment is going to be.

Step 2: Choose a theme. An engaging environment should have some sort of theme. A theme will help your online environment feel immersive and like a setting rather than just a page with links. In this case, you may be able to connect the learning that will take place directly to the online environment, or you can create a theme to establish motivation or enthusiasm. This is a great place to also take student interests into consideration. Here are the corresponding themes that I have used for each of the purposes I mentioned in step 1.

  • The Amazing Race

  • The Hunger Games

  • A haunted museum (did this one during Halloween)

  • Part of The Underground, my in-class year-long game for the 2019-2020 school year

Step 3: Choose a platform. This is where you can start getting as technically complicated or not as you prefer! There are lots of great tools that you can use to create an online learning environment for your students. Personally, I'm a fan of Google tools. We are a Google school and my students all have Chromebooks. I'm also Google Certified, so this fits in my comfort zone. Whatever the case, when you are considering the platform on which you will "host" your online environment, consider the following:

  • How will students access your online learning environment?

  • Where will they access it? (In the classroom? At home? Both?)

  • Is anything "special" required to access it? (A certain app or device, for example)

  • Am I paying for anything? (Totally up to you, but there are so many amazing free tools out there that you should really consider if something paid is going to be worth it.)

  • How easy is this to navigate? (You want an environment that is engaging and challenging without being incredibly complicated.)

Some examples of tools I have used (and often mix-and-match) create my online learning environments include:


Step 4: Choose your game elements. So what does "gamifying" actually mean? Well, there are lots of authors who have put this in writing far more eloquently than I could. For the sake of simplicity, let's say that when we "gamify" our online learning environment, that means we are using components and/or mechanics that are used in the creation of games. (And not just video games! Board games, card games, RPGs, physical games... any sort of game can be used to inspire gamification!) Some of my favorite gamification gurus that you should check out are Michael Materra, John Meehan, Scott Hebert, and Chris Aviles. These guys all have their own flair for gamification and are all absolutely brilliant.

So when I say to choose your game elements, what I mean is that you are going to choose something that games use as a motivator. Here are some examples:

  • points

  • badges

  • levels

  • leaderboards/scoreboards

  • collectibles

  • bonuses

  • power-ups

  • perks

  • story (narratives or quest lines)

  • timers/countdowns

  • character creation

  • Easter eggs

If you're looking for more inspiration, I found this fantastic PDF! Here are some ways I have used game components in an online learning environment:

  • I have hidden Easter eggs in Google Classroom and on my classroom websites. Sometimes the Easter eggs are an actual reward (like a music pass) and sometimes they are just for fun (a silly video, a crazy picture, an awesome GIF).

  • I use Google Classroom to award badges.

  • I wrote a quest line that went along with my Hall of Dead Authors.

  • I designed a live scoreboard students could watch during The Hunger Games.

  • I used a stopwatch during each leg of The Amazing Race and kept a leaderboard that showed each team's cumulative time.

I have used many other game elements in my classroom (that's a whole other blog post), but these are a few that I have used just in my gamified online learning environments.

Okay, do you have to use all of these game elements? Definitely not! Work within your comfort zone! If this is all brand new to you, choose one thing to add. Personally, I recommend starting with Easter eggs because they are super easy to do and require almost 0 additional effort. If you're really into this and are having a blast, add more! Your kids are going to love any motivational game element that you can offer.

Step 5: Time to build! Real talk for a second. Building an online learning environment can be time-consuming. Even if you go as simple as you can, I wouldn't necessarily recommend building this environment on Sunday night at 10 p.m. so you can use it at 8 a.m. on Monday. You're going to want to build your online environment ahead of time. If you invest the time in creating a really excellent product, you will be able to use it time and again.

This is a screenshot of the homepage for my Amazing Race online environment. The live scoreboard on the left was created using Google Slides. The actual race map with all of the course content was made in Google My Maps. I also included the rules of gameplay as a Google Slides deck. All of these items were embedded onto a page made in Google Sites.

Check out some other examples below.
*NOTE: These are online learning environments that I have created and used in the classroom. I only edited some items for privacy. Some links will not work. Please do not request access to items as they are part of my school's domain and I won't be able to share them with you. These examples are just meant to serve as starting points to help you build your own ideas!*

This is an online environment, but it is part of our classroom website. Many of the learning materials have been removed from this example, but I included it to show you how it is set up. Click the picture to view the website.

This is an escape room game. You won't be able to access all of the materials, but I used this to introduce three horror authors and examples of their work. Students answered questions about the works to get clues and help them escape.

This is the gamified online learning environment I used for my English classes during emergency online learning this spring. Two of the pursuits are available for you to look at. Again, some links won't work.

My students helped build this one! We pair informational text study with our whole-class novel study for The Hunger Games. Students created interactive nonfiction survival guides on a variety of topics and many of these survival guides were incorporated into our training center for the whole class game of Hunger Games. Some of the training centers are available for you to check view here.

Conclusion

Gamified online learning environments have been an excellent addition to my classroom for multiple reasons. They are a fun and exciting way to package course content. Students enjoy the familiarity of the game components. I enjoy constructing them as a creative outlet. I have been able to use some of my gamified online learning environments more than once. It was also great to be able to offer my students some "gamified" lessons in the form of a gamified online learning environment during our COVID-19 emergency online learning experience. If you're looking for a new and engaging way to package and present content to your students, this might be an experiment for you to try!

References

Joselowsky, F. (2007). Youth engagement, high school reform, and improved learning outcomes: Building systemic approaches for youth engagement. National Association of Secondary School Principals, 91(3), 257-276.

Sanacore, J. (2008). Turning reluctant learners into inspired learners. The Clearing House, 82(1), 40-44.