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Gamification: Hype or
Useful Teacher Tool?
Deborah Healey
American English Institute/Dept. of Linguistics,
University of Oregon
Kai Liu
Dept. of Linguistics, University of Oregon
sites.google.com/site/gamificationforelteachers/

Agenda
 Brief intro to gamification
 What is it?
 Game mechanics
 Try it yourself – stations; classroom
applications
 Debrief
© 2013 D. Healey, dhealey@uoregon.edu

Games vs. gamification
They’re not the same

Classroom activities
We’ll talk about gamifying these later
 Responding to questions about a 10-minute
video clip
 Memorizing vocabulary for a weekly quiz
 Highlighting the transition words in a reading
 Doing a workbook exercise about the past
tense
 Doing a presentation about a favorite vacation
 Writing a compare/contrast paragraph.

What’s a game?
 A system with rules, some sort of
challenge, feedback of some sort,
interaction, fun, and often with an
emotional response.
(from many authors)

Gamification??
 Gamification is adding elements of
games and gaming to regular activities
that we may not normally think of as
games.
 Business
 Training
 Education

Kapp, 2012: Elements
 Game mechanics –points, levels, and
badges (PBL), scoring, time constraints
 Game thinking – competition,
cooperation, exploration, storytelling
 Aesthetics – a visually or otherwise
interesting environment that creates a
different “feel” to the activity (pp.9-11)

Why do we care?
 Demographics
 Digital natives
 Engagement
 Extrinsic => intrinsic motivation
 It’s our world

Teachers use these
 Cascading Information Theory –
breaking up information into bits
 Curriculum in teaching
 Achievements – where learners have
accomplished something relative to others
 “Achievers” – I’m better than others
 Community Collaboration – working together
to solve a problem or do a task.
 Group work in teaching
 “Socializers”
Images from http://www.gamification.org/wiki/Game_Mechanics

More that we use now
 Points – giving numerical value for
actions
 Grades in teaching
 Loss Aversion – avoiding punishment
 Grading, often
 Behavioral Momentum – the
tendency to keep doing something
 Fun Once, Fun Always – classroom routines

What we could add
 Countdown– having only a certain
amount of time to do something
 Homework, tests, activities
 Levels – more points = more rewards
 Start at 0 and add points to grades
 Quests – give activities a larger focus
 Check this later: Penny Arcade video
www.penny-arcade.com/patv/episode/gamifying-education

What we could add
 Progression – gradual success,
made visible
 Chart of reading speed, other
 Ownership– control of something
 Publishing, learner choices

Try it - stations
Explanation – see the handout

Project/task-based learning
 Blissful productivity – joy in work
 Discovery/Exploration
 “Explorers”
 Epic meaning – doing something big
 Projects outside the classroom, audience
 Quests/Challenges – overcoming
obstacles
 Virality – working with others

Debrief
 What did you do? What do you think?

Q&A
Thanks!
sites.google.com/site/gamificationforelteachers/
dhealey@uoregon.edu
http://www.deborahhealey.com
kliu4@uoregon.edu

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Gamification in ELT for ORTESOL 2013

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Gamification in ELT for ORTESOL 2013