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An important part of making gamification work is the rewards and powers a student or group can earn. I want to give you some ideas for rewards and I want you to add five rewards to the list. You may or may not end up using all of these since you haven’t yet organized how gaming works in your classroom, but it is important to start with a framework. Before you move on, there are some basic ideas you should be familiar with in order to design rewards that are motivating.
Gabe Zihermann defined the idea of SAPS to show the order of rewards from most motivating to least motivating. First is status, recognition and appreciation. Second is access to experiences not everyone can enjoy; a true VIP treatment. Next is power meaning the ability to control themselves and others. Lastly is stuff or tangible rewards. This is evidence that you don’t need to spend a lot of money to make this work. For the most part the goal of the rewards are to provide access, power and privilege to students in order to increase their motivation to keep learning and earning more points! Keep these three ideas in mind….
1. You are currently giving away power and privilege for free and you should be charging for it!
2. The powers and privileges you are selling should make your life as a teacher easier.
3. Items should provide students a way to fix mistakes to some extent.
If you keep these three things in mind, you’ll find that the rewards/power are amazing because the gamification starts to go from motivating students to learn to empowering them to take responsibility for themselves. Things that were ‘grey area’ problems become black and white. Students either have the points for the reward/power or they don’t.
Finally, I have designed my gaming classroom into two point categories. There are points earned by the group that apply to their group points only. Group points aren’t spent. The top groups earn a free privilege or power at the end of each unit. Then I assign new groups and the group points start again at zero.
Then there are individual points that apply to the student’s personal points AND increase their group points. The personal points can used to purchase powers and privledges from the gamer shop and they carryover to the next unit. Don’t worry if that doesn’t make much sense. It will as you get deeper into the design process.
Possible Individual Rewards
Test Retake - 100 points
Quiz Retake - 40 points
Music Pass - 100 points per month
Music Pass season pass - 500 points for the school year
Cell phone use- 100 points per month
Cell phone season pass - 500 points for the school year
Out of Class Pass - 100 points tip: On the first day of school, give out an achievement
that just so happens to be worth enough for a student to go to the bathroom. That
way every student has a bathroom pass in the bank and you start off the year on a
positive note.
Print Pass - 200 points
Tipping Point - 600 points meaning: if a student’s grade is, say, 89.3 - I will tip it to 90% so
they have an A instead of a B+
Me First 100 points – meaning: you will grade their paper first
Second Chance - 200 points meaning: students can redo work from a unit to increase
their actual grade
Extendomatic - 50 points meaning: a student can turn in an assignment late without a
Penalty on their actual grade
Lunch Bunch - 200 points meaning: students can eat lunch in your classroom
Slander - 150 points meaning: a student can change another groups name
Misnomer -200 points meaning: a student can change their OWN group name
Oopsie - 150 points meaning: a student can change their gamertag
Jester - 100 points meaning: a student gets 10 minutes at the end of class to tell a story,
joke, show a youtube video, etc.
Wear a hat season pass - 100 points for the school year
Eat food - 25 points per day
Tardy Pass - 50 points per tardy
Group Rewards
Tree Killer - anyone in your group can print for one month
Song Of My People - everyone in your group gets a free music pass for a month
Benefactor - anyone in your group can give your points to another student
ExtendOMatic coupon - Can be used on any assignment, one time use, no expiration
Flexible Seating - sit where you want
Groupie - all winning group members get to pick their group for the next unit instead of
being randomly assigned.
Now, add five powers/rewards to the list. They can be for an individual or a group.
You have now learned about some benefits of using games in the classroom, the essential elements of a good game, the types of ‘players’ or students you are hoping to engage and you have some ideas for rewards you could offer.
You haven’t learned a thing on how to actually do this in your classroom. Don’t worry! That is our next step. You will be redesigning one unit into a game! In 2 - 3 paragraphs, I want you to describe the unit you plan to redesign and address the current problems with it and what problems you hope to solve by adding games in addition to other details you feel are important to mention.
Take the Rewards Quiz now!
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