There are so many ways to gamify learning that it can be difficult to get started, so let me explain how you might organize competitions. First, you should consider who will be competing: individuals, partners, teams, or classes. Then think about how they will compete: complete an assignment, play an online game, take a quiz, participate in a lab and finally you must figure out what they will win: points, badges, level up, privilege, treat, etc. As you get better at gamification you will find that all of these types of competitions are useful depending on the particular lesson and you will likely begin to visualize how to design an entire game based unit.

Sometimes I use several of them at one time; for example, 'Today you will be playing a Kahoot. If everyone participates the class will earn 50 points in the class challenge (to earn a party). The top three teams will get a chance at trashketball. Any team who makes a basket will get to leave class 5 minutes early.' You can take a dull lesson (say doing 20 practice problems) and turn it into fun and games quite easily (like the example above).

For one, you could use an online group game like Kahoot., Quizlet Live, Quizizz, Gimkit, Deck Toys or Jeopardy immediately after students have learned a new skill. Instead of practice problems, have students work in partners to play the game. Allow the top 3 or 5 competitors to have a piece of candy, choose their seat next class, play trashketball, leave class 5 minutes early or whatever small prize you can offer. Not only will you have less grading, but you will actually have more students learning and participating. Another idea is to turn a review session of practice problems into sets of challenges and set the conditions to earn a reward: if any student is able to successfully complete all of the challenges then they get to wear headphones during the test.

If you are teaching a new concept, you could use PearDeck or NearPod to add game elements to a Slides or Power Point presentation. I like it because students can immediately practice what they have learned while taking traditional notes.

Complicated concepts can be simplified by using themes. For example, if you need to teach a convergent or analytical type of skill you could create a surgical, construction, or bakery theme where things are brought together. For divergent types of lessons or when content needs to be broken down, you could use a dissection or construction theme. You could use puzzles or “breakouts ” with themes like zombie apocalypse, carnival fun, or Harry Potter to review any type of content. Naturally, the theater or concert theme can be used for any type of acting or presenting that students will do. Finally, you could use the lodge or coffee shop theme if you plan to present content that should be followed with student discussions. There are many more themes that are just a Google search away! A theme adds more meaning to 'the game' of school.

If you can’t connect a theme to a lesson, then you can always design a lesson around one of Dave Burgess’ learning hooks. The more hooks you use, the more likely you will get your students hooked on learning. The main hooks Mr. Burgess details in his book are using movement (walking around, model a process with movement, multiple choice corners), leaving the classroom (go outside, go the gym, scavenger hunt), using and creating art (drawing the notes, painting an analogy, word pictures, listening to songs, singing, poems, origami, stories), acting (create a skit, use props and costumes, create a video, impersonate scientists or historical figures), creating a mystery (scavenger hunts, breakouts, boxes with unknown contents, secret messages) and more! We won’t cover every hook here, but the idea is that he has detailed how to combine brain based learning with activities to create engaging lessons. To gamify the lesson, simply add a rule - if 80% of students are able to complete this activity, behave this way, follow this rule.....then you earn........

You might wonder why anyone would put forth so much effort for one lesson? Well, the theme or hook coupled with game play is there for the fun factor and it sparks curiosity. It puts kids into a relaxed state of mind and secures the ideal conditions for more complex learning. The truth is that if you invest the time into creating dynamic and exciting lessons within a gamified context, you will spend much less time doing the things you hate like calling parents with bad news, gathering missing work, answering the same questions over and over, grading papers, arguing about why this class is important, etc. It is jaw dropping what a few tweaks to the lesson design will do for student learning.

I have literally heard most of my students debating over whether or not a compound is molecular or ionic, and which phase of matter has the most intermolecular forces AND get this, how the valence electrons, as described by the Bohr model, release energy when they are excited. These are real conversations that no one cares about in real life but kids DO care when they want to win or when they are racing against the clock to solve a puzzle, save an imaginary life or to keep the zombies from attacking. The Future of Learning website suggests turning test taking into battles with the evil emperor and turning lab assignments such as conductivity testing (which has an LED sensor) into searching for objects that will turn on the alien's launch light. The possibilities are endless.

The main idea here is that students are still doing the same type of work and problems within a gamified context which makes it appear to be more interesting and worthwhile. Determine what your most difficult lessons are and get busy planning for a theme or hook. You can teach kids anything no matter what it is. It’s all about the presentation of the content.

As you get better, you can begin to design units or maybe your entire course around a game using leaderboards, badges and a point system. There are many ideas for doing so in this manual I created.

Some content taken from:

Burgess, Dave. "Teach Like a Pirate." 2012.

TeachThoughtStaff. "12 Examples of Gamification in the Classroom." The Future of Learning. Jan. 3, 2019. https://www.teachthought.com/the-future-of-learning/12-examples-of-gamification-in-the-classroom/

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