Picture this, you are in a classroom giving a lesson. Students are a little antsy and not entirely responsive to taking notes based on your lecture slides. Enter the world of gamification!

Gamification is the use and application of game play elements to engage and motivate students in learning (Hall, 2014). The big idea behind gamification is creating a challenging learning environment for students that incorporates self-directed quests and rewards.

The World Government Summit (2017) outlines four freedoms of play that should be used to create a gamified learning experience. The freedoms of play are as follows:

1. The Freedom to Fail
   • This freedom allows students to fail with little consequences
2. The Freedom to Experiment
   • This freedom allows students to explore and discover new information and strategies
3. The Freedom to Assume Different Identities
   • This freedom encourages players to examine and see problems from a different perspective
4. The Freedom of Effort
   • This freedom allows students to go through phases of intense learning and relatively inactive learning

Incorporating all four of the above freedoms will allow students to drive their learning experience and encourage students to engage and learn at their own pace.

As an future math and science educator, I have spent sometime researching and trialing methods of gamification in the classroom. During my practicum, I had trialed some offline and online methods of gamifying the classroom.

The first method I tried was turning some sample problems into an offline board game style task. I applied this technique to a lesson on equivalent resistance. I created five circuit diagrams, each with four resistors and a total resistance, which became the boards and pieces. Students were placed in five groups and given four resistors and a total resistance piece. The task required students to see how quickly they could determine if their resistors could be arranged on the circuit to equal their total resistance card. The activity required students to apply the knowledge they learned to solve the puzzle.

An online method I used was the delivery of my lessons through ClassFlow. ClassFlow is an online lesson delivery software where students can login and follow along with the lesson. The teacher can incorporate multiple assessment opportunities which include true/false, multiple choice, text-based, and creative response opportunities. Student responses will appear anonymously on the class interactive whiteboard for immediate feedback from the teacher. I found this to be a very useful tool to increase student engagement. The teacher also has the ability to create and assign badges for student achievements. These badges can be used to reward behaviours the teacher desires such as badges relating to streaks of class engagement or a streaks related to correct responses.

Lastly, I discovered Classcraft. Classcraft is a tool where students can create an avatar and are assigned to teams. The avatars can gain experience points for good classroom behaviours and lose health points for bad behaviours. Teachers also have the ability to design quests with assignments linked to the Google Classroom. Students can perform the tasks at their own pace. These quests could be a new way to motivate students to do their homework. I have no experience using Classcraft in a classroom, but am interested to try it on my next placement!