Like many faculty across higher education, the ongoing pandemic has forced us to adapt our teaching strategies and to leverage technology in order to create effective learning experiences for students. Over almost two years spent largely in a virtual environment, instructors are going back to in-person teaching with lots of logistical challenges to re-design and sustain their course plans. Gameful pedagogy is an effective approach that attracted the interest of many instructors at U-M and beyond to motivate students to learn as they pivoted to virtual or blended learning.
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Gameful pedagogy is “an approach that takes inspiration from well-designed games to create learning environments that support student motivation” (Holman, 2018, p. 1) [1]. It is rooted in the Motivation theory and incorporates elements from game design such as choice, flexibility, personalization, and safe failure in order to motivate students to compete indirectly and engage deeply with the course materials. A growing number of research studies have linked the use of gameful pedagogy in education to increased student engagement, enhanced intrinsic motivation, greater feelings of agency and control over learning, and consequently increased academic achievement and success[1] & [2].
In a typical gameful course, the instructor provides different types of assignments and allows for autonomous choice to help students build their confidence and competence. Course grades are set up as attainment levels that begin with zero and are defined in points instead of percentages or letter grades. Students earn points as they complete their selected assignments and activities in the course and level up towards the determined attainment level to accomplish the course goals. What’s great about this approach is that it encourages students to take risks as they make choices about which assignments to complete and earn points. Because students are not losing part of 100% on their course grades, they perceive failure as a learning opportunity so they are more likely to seek challenges and demonstrate their competence without the fear of failure that might lead to a non-recoverable impact on their grade.
According to the 2019 summer term data from the Center for Academic Innovation (CAI), U-M instructors across 48 programs have employed gameful pedagogy impacting over 10,000 learners. It is worth mentioning that many tools could assist you to implement the gameful approach in your course, however, they are not necessary to implement it. Any tools that can help you track students’ progress and provide transparency in terms of your clear expectations and how you’re going to evaluate students, would be sufficient.
GradeCraft is one of the most useful tools, developed in 2012 at the University of Michigan, to build a gameful course. It can be enabled within your Canvas course to replace the Canvas gradebook and help you track students’ choices and progress utilizing the following key features:
Points Planner - enables students to decide which assignments they want to work on, set clear goals for themselves, and plan their work in your course
Leveling System - allows you to customize the grading scheme or point thresholds
Badges - can be used to recognize student achievement on a specific assignment or more broadly in the course
Unlocks and Gating - enables you to determine what foundational work students have to complete before unlocking additional opportunities
Learning Analytics - allows you to keep track of who is making progress and who may need more support
Flexible Rubrics - show students the concise expectations you have for their work
Leaderboards - allows students to choose to participate in anonymous, team-based leaderboards if they enjoy competition, or opt-out if they don't
Instructors who invested in a gameful approach have found that it motivates students to learn, enables personalization of learning[1], and promotes learners’ creativity[3]. They're able to hold their students to a higher standard by giving students the ability to choose how to demonstrate their learning, and providing room for recovery after failure which encourages students to take risks and practice in a safe environment without the fear of being penalized. Moreover, the gameful approach promotes inclusivity and fosters a sense of belonging in their courses through providing transparent instruction. Providing clear instruction about the norms, expectations, and evaluation criteria helps remove the learning barriers and enhance student success. Please refer to Transforming Courses Using a Gameful Approach-(2020) for more guidance on how to get started with the gameful approach, best practices, examples, and advice from U-M colleagues.
If you are interested in exploring the gameful approach or Gradecraft in your course, feel free to reach out to [email protected] or request a one-on-one consultation with one of the Learning and Teaching consultants or call us at 734-615-0100.
Further Reading
[1] Motivating Students to Learn: Transforming Courses Using a Gameful Approach (2020). CRLT Occasional Paper No. 40. - CRLT- University of Michigan
[2] Hayward, C., & Fishman, B. (2020). Gameful learning: Designing with motivation in mind.
[3] The Effectiveness of Educational Games on Post-Pandemic Learning- The Chronicle of Higher Education
[4] Gameful Assessment in Michigan Education (GAME) - CRLT- University of Michigan
