Education Archives - Gamified UK - #Gamification Expert

Why Gorillas (and Games) are such good Teachers

November 12, 2024 by Andrzej Marczewski

Games have always been excellent tools for teaching and learning. There are plenty of reasons why this may be, but for me, it comes down to one simple thing – they give context to the materials.

Let us for a moment take a simple example—projectile paths.

We could look at the equation

Or, we could add context to the idea and play Gorillas instead, where we get to alter the velocity and angle of a player throwing a projectile at another player.

https://github.com/HunorMarton/gorillas

Obviously, the game is more fun. We are learning about how velocity, launch angles and gravity all work to create parabolic projectile paths in a fun way. Do you learn everything? No, but it gives context to the formula and brings it to life. Read More ...

Using RAMP to keep kids learning during lockdown

February 21, 2024March 27, 2020 by Andrzej Marczewski

It was thinking about my children’s current situation of having to learn remotely. So, based on current experience and the aforementioned blog, here are some tips on using RAMP to help your kids stay engaged and motivated during home-based learning.

Setting the Scene

I have two kids who are currently at home doing school work, 8 and 12. They both have totally different learning styles, needs and of course work to do. The 8-year-old is normally very task-focused with a need for total control of her environment and rigorous routines. The 12-year-old is totally different with some significant learning/processing difficulties in the form of dyslexia and dyscalculia.

The 8-year-old has maybe 2 hours of work set by the school per day, whilst the 12-year old seems to have more work set for home learning than when she was in the school full time – but that is another story!

RAMP is a simple motivational framework based on self-determination theory that I published here originally in something like 2012/13. It stands for Relatedness, Autonomy, Mastery and Purpose.

R.A.M.P During Home Learning Lock Down!

So, how can we make use of this to help our kids during this period of lockdown (or any period of home learning)?

Relatedness

Making sure your kids have ways to stay connected to friends and other family is essential generally during long periods of isolation. However, during learning periods it can also be an invaluable way of keeping them a little saner and getting help from their peers. This requires certain tools. My eldest likes to dial friends in using Facetime on her iPhone so that they can chat whilst they are working on the same bits of schoolwork. There are other apps out there that can do this, she also uses WhatsApp with those who are not on iPhone. She also uses groups on WhatsApp to keep in touch via text with specific groups of peers at school. They use these groups to moan about the amount of work, the teachers, each other but also to get help (which we will come to in a bit). Other tools include Skype, HouseParty and probably many more.

I find that this is one of the most important motivations to consider when thinking about how kids can thrive in these periods of isolation. They have gone from being surrounded by dozens of people all the time to just one or two and that is very scary and a huge change for them. Make use of technology to help!

Autonomy

This is a little trickier and will be counter-intuitive – but bear with me!

In theory, autonomy is great hugely important to motivation. However, when you consider school and the strict timetables involved, it is hard to see how autonomy can get involved. How do you promote free-thinking and working at your own pace when you are stuck with a draconian educational system that relies solely on presenteeism? The paradox deepens when you look at how alien running learning from home is to many teachers. The current workload my eldest has is actually heavier than her school day. Instead of 9-3:15, she is currently working 8:30 until 4 with fewer breaks just to stay on top of it.

On the flip side, my youngest has about 2 hours of work set per day at most.

SO, how do we work with this? Well, it depends on watching how your child learns in this new environment. My youngest, who we thought would need strict time tables to maintain her routine, actually thrives on just being left to get on with stuff as and when she wants. Rather than spacing her work out over the day on a time table, she takes herself up to her room at 8:30 and just works on it until it is all done, giving her the rest of the day to play. That works great for her.

My eldest, due to the level of work involved, has to stick to a time table. However, we give her the autonomy to decide when she starts and finishes. If she wants to start at 8:30 that is fine. Id she wants to work through lunch, that is ok – if we think the mental load is not too great for her. We use her timetable as a framework, and she goes from there.

It isn’t easy, but my advice is to experiment with different levels of autonomy to see how your child performs. We are all learning here!

Mastery

This seems pretty obvious really. They are learning, so they are experiencing mastery. The issue is, for the most part, they don’t want to be doing it. This means that any intrinsic motivation felt from mastery is all but lost! Instead we need to look at goal setting and small wins. If you are working to a time table, this becomes fairly easy. Each period of the day is a new task and goal. Celebrate getting through each piece of work with a snack, or a play outside for a few minutes – or just by saying well done to your kids!

If there is no time table, then you need to set lest organised goals, but goals none the less. Get 3 pieces of work done by 1pm. Get 1 piece done by 10am.

Once you have goals set for your kids, make sure you congratulate them for achieving them – this is very important. Congratulate their achievements and support and encourage them if they are not hitting their goals. This isn’t school remember, they are still at home and if they need longer – you can give them longer! Don’t punish them or shout at them if they don’t completely work.

This brings me to the final point around the goals. If they are struggling to get work done, let them stop at a defined time. COnsider in class they only have 30 minutes or an hour (usually). At the end of that time, they stop and go to the next lesson. When working from home it is tempting just to keep going until it is done. If they really want to, let them, but if they are struggling make the stop at a sensible place. COngratulate them for their effort. If they have to submit their work, add a note explaining that they spent over an hour working on it. Most teachers will be fine with this – remember they are new to this as well!

Purpose

We will consider both types of purpose. Meaningful and Altruistic.

Meaningful Purpose – why am I doing this. this is tough when they are at home like this. It is especially tough if, like my youngest daughter, the work they are doing is not being submitted to the school or marked! It is also tough when you get comments like “what are they going to do – give me detention?”.

You need to reinforce how important it is for your kids to not fall too far behind, as it will cause them issues when school starts up normally again. Remind them how the majority of lessons are still teaching them important life skills. Keep encouraging them and telling them how awesome they are.

I am not going to lie, I am hating how learning from home is being handled. The work is dull, uninspiring and really hard when the kids have no support. I am not a teacher, I can’t help them with everything they are doing (I’m also working full time!) But, for the sake of their sanity – I keep those opinions to myself!

Altruistic Purpose – How can I help others. As mentioned earlier, there are plenty of tools available to help keep your kids connected to their friends. This is especially important when they are struggling and need help. Using WhatsApp groups is a great way to give them an opportunity to ask for help, but also to provide help for others, which can give them a great sense of satisfaction. Encourage it – and for the love of God, don’t ban their phones whilst they are working!

The Final Word

I am not a teacher. I don’t know what I am doing any more than most parents who have been thrust into the position of both carer and facilitator of home learning. It is hard and confusing and scary for the kids and for us as parents. We can only do our best and trust that the teachers are setting work that is relevant to our children and at a level that they can manage. Keep in mind though, with the teachers not able to directly help in class, you may need to stray from certain paths whilst you wait for responses to cries for help from them!

Be flexible, be understanding, keep RAMP in mind and keep doing what you are doing – you are awesome and we will all get through this.

Stay safe, be considerate of each other and please please please – wash your hands!

Teaching the Value of Money with Games

April 4, 2018 by Andrzej Marczewski

We don’t give our daughters pocket money. There are many reasons for this, but one of them is a concern about their understanding of the value of money. This is especially true for our eldest daughter who has dyscalculia. This means she struggles with, among other things, understanding magnitude.

This, added to the fact she is 11, means that money is a very abstract concept for her. As soon as she has it, it needs to be spent. This is not much different from any other kids if we are honest, but it is particularly bad for her as she just doesn’t get the value of money at all. Numbers are pretty meaningless to her!

This is where games come in.

She likes to play games such as Roblox and Animal Jam. Both of these have a two-tier virtual currency system. One currency can be earned via in-game activities, the other needs to be bought with real money.

When she first started playing, we would get daily requests for money to buy virtual currency. She wanted a new top in the game, she needed a new pet, her house needed a new sofa etc etc etc. It was relentless. It made us hate the games beyond all reasonable emotions!

But eventually, we saw it as an opportunity. Don’t get me wrong, we still hate Roblox, but for many other reasons!

The Teaching Moment

One of the mini-games that the eldest was playing in Roblox had her earning in-game currency doing menial jobs (limbo competitions…). She wanted to be prom queen and needed to earn 30,000 credits to buy the best dress. Of course, the game offered another option. You could buy 30,000 credits for about £10. Of course, she asked me if I would buy her the credits. I refused. She then asked if she could do a deal. If she earned most of the credits, would I boost her with maybe £2 of credits? That way she had to earn some and I would be rewarding her for that. I refused.

She took it well, she understood and started to earn the credits. Every night she spent an hour doing limbo to earn the money!

The Eureka! Moment

After a few nights, she was just 1000 credits away from earning her. The pride she was feeling at this stage was very gratifying to behold. I then secretly bought her the rest of the credits. She was over the moon. But now she had a dilemma. It had been hard work to earn those credits and did she really want to spend them all at once. Suddenly, she had an understanding that the credits represented effort. She had not just been handed them on a plate, so they had meaning to her. It was a true Eureka moment!

The Lessons

That was when it struck me. Games like this can help kids start to understand the value of money, without as much risk of losing real money. If they have to “work” and show commitment to earn the money to get the things they want, then they start to see the value. It is similar to giving pocket money based on chores, however here still there is a slight detachment from the value. It begins to feel like a habit and a right, rather than earning the money.

The Sting in the Tail

This all hit home for my daughter when her account was hacked and she was afraid she had lost her hard-earned prom dress! She was in pieces, all that work and someone had the ability to just take her stuff without putting in any effort. As painful as it was, this was a strong lesson for her – one that seems to have stopped her just asking for me to buy her credits for games. Now she comes to me with a slightly more business-like approach to it all. It is progress!!

Never underestimate the learning power of games!

Guest Post: Storytelling and gamification in education

November 8, 2017 by Andrzej Marczewski

Today I am excited to be able to publish a guest post from a good friend of mine, Rob Alvarez Bucholska. We speak regularly and he is a great gamification educator. Here he speaks about how he uses storytelling in materials he creates for the IE Business School in Madrid. Enjoy!

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A while ago, Andrzej Marczewski wrote “6 Tips for Short Term Gamification“, and there is one that stood out for me because of my experience creating interactive learning materials at IE Business School. As you might guess from the title it is about narrative and storytelling. What I’ve done in the past are learning materials that, purposefully, are short bursts of learning for students. They are designed to be completed in 90 minutes or less. If you consider the typical gamified product, where you are normally looking for medium to long-term engagement, it is easy to see that there might be many strategies that don’t apply here.

I found myself implementing several of the ideas that Andrzej proposes in that post before I read it, but particularly resonated with storytelling (here and here you can find some more ideas on narrative by the same author). You see, I’ve found that storytelling and narrative can be particularly compelling for the type of interactive learning that actually has a limited amount of time to interact with. A story or a number of stories, if well crafted, have the capacity to immerse each learner in the place that you have created for them to experience. Purposefully intertwining a narrative with exercises, feedback, interactive elements, video or other forms of presenting information greatly enhances not only the engagement, which is the reason for creating a gamified experience, but also the learning that is the “business objective” that comes when creating educational experiences.

With a great narrative, we’ve had students so hooked to their learning, that they’ve revisited materials time and time again to overcome challenges and get the full picture of a story. This, of course, deepens their knowledge and understanding of the topic, which, again, was the purpose of creating the learning material itself.

The fact that the learning experience is meant to last one hour and a half maximum is by no means a measure of the amount of time needed to create a compelling story, less so a gamified learning experience. These tips offered by Andrzej are very useful when creating short-term experiences, but they still require thoughtful design and careful crafting.

Interested in learning more about how these gamification elements, such as narrative and storytelling, can be used in education? I’d like to invite you to listen to Professor Game Podcast. It can be found on iTunes, Stitcher and professorgame.com. Subscribe here and you’ll have all the details. You’ll find weekly interviews with gurus like Andrzej Marczewski as well as experts and practitioners, that will give you guidance and inspiration to use gamification and game thinking to multiply the learning and engagement in your classroom.

Rob Alvarez Bucholska

@RobAlvarezB

School Grades Are The Wrong Way Around

May 26, 2017 by Andrzej Marczewski

I often hear people say that school is just a badly designed game. I have to agree. I also hear a lot that part of the problems is people chasing grades rather than mastery and that grades should be dropped. I have to partially disagree.

I totally agree that school should be about master, not grade chasing, but I don’t agree we should get rid of grades, just redesign them. For me, grades are the wrong way around. The assumption is that we start at an A* and we either maintain that or the grade can fluctuate wildly assignment to assignment. If we were to follow a more game-like approach, we would consider progress and experience points rather than ever changing grades.

Each challenge that is set for the students would be assigned a maximum number of experience points that can be earned. These points would accumulate over the term, creating the equivalent of a final grade at the end of the year. For example:

XP	Grade
1000 or More	A*
800	A
600	B
500	C
400	D
300	E
200 or Less	F

There are a number of reasons that I would suggest this. The first is that it makes it easier for students to track their progress over time. They know how much each assignment is worth and how many points they need to get to achieve certain grades (assuming you have to convert back to them). This means they can more easily set themselves goals. To make this easier still, at the start of the year you give them a level map or progress chart that shows when each

To make this easier still, at the start of the year you give them a level map or progress chart that shows when each assignment

will be set and how many points they are worth. This way they can tick them off as they go. They are then able to tell where they are and where they are going. To add to the fun (learning should be fun after all), you can add side quests to earn bonus points or special unlocks (like earn a week off homework if you unlock the secrets etc).

I am not talking about creating a whole fantasy world, just a different approach to mapping out how you grade the work of students. You don’t even need to change the need for a final A,B,C grade, if you create a conversion matrix. Obviously creating full fantasy experience would be cool and, as it is beginning to appear, beneficial.

The key is to give them a sense that they are working towards something and are always able to see where they are and where they are going. Transparency also is important. Grades are not very transparent, but seeing you got 80 out of 100 possible points for an assignment is much easier to understand. Knowing that you need 1000 to get an A for the term adds another level of clarity.