Introduction
Teachers want their lessons to be enjoyable, immersive, productive and full of learning. In this regard, digital games have everything they want. Successful digital games maintain players’ attention, require them to solve problems, acquire new knowledge and learn new skills. Moreover, despite the considerable amount of learning, emotional investment (including frustration) and often monotonous labour (for example, working back through levels each time you ‘die’), players will not only persist but also call it ‘fun’. It is not surprising then that the idea of incorporating digital games into the classroom has taken hold of teachers for decades. More recently, educators have realised that they can also learn from the success of digital games and use game principles to ‘gamify’ learning activities. However, digital games are not a ‘magic bullet’ for education. Giving students a digital game does not ensure that they will be learning in the classroom; the teacher will still have to resolve behaviour management and motivation issues. This chapter aims to explain how digital games and gamification can be used in education, while also pointing out some related concerns.
Digital games and gamification
It is important not to confuse digital games and gamification. They are not synonyms. Gamification is the use of game design (mechanics and dynamics) in what is typically considered non-game environments such as the classroom. Some of the elements we might use when applying gamification to curriculum activities are: levels, badges, points, competition and status. There are many more but, importantly, gamification is more than simply changing the age old ‘gold star’ reward in a classroom to a ‘badge’ or changing the name of lesson to ‘level 1’. Time and ultimately iterative design need to be invested into the mechanics (for example, levels) and the dynamics (for example, when those levels are unlocked). In addition, deeper considerations of game play need to be imbued into the instructional design including notions of ‘permission to fail’ – in games students ‘die’ all the time. Students need to be able to have choices and strategies for success – in games they have immediate feedback on their success or failure and can hypothesise on how to succeed the next time. Another consideration is how to encourage curiosity, imagination and a state of flow (a state of full immersion in a feeling of energised focus).