Flipped-History

Part 12: Narrative / Avatars

Part 11: Leaderboards

Part 13: Managing Gamification

Part 14: Results

Part 15: The Next Level

GOOGLE DOC COMPILATION OF ALL POSTS

Tuesday, June 10, 2014

Gamification Series Part 14: Results

When reflecting upon whether gamification "worked" this year, I had to revisit the major reason why I ventured into this in the first place. It all boils down to this brief explanation:

Problem = Lack of Motivation & Engagement

Proposed Solution = Gamification

Although this is admittedly oversimplified, it at least provides a frame of reference when evaluating this year's gamified course.

STUDENT SURVEY

How did I measure whether gamification improved motivation and engagement? Simple, I asked the students. Here are some results from a Google Form survey the students recently completed:

67% were more motivated to learn in a gamified learning environment.

88% were more engaged in class on a daily basis.

Beyond motivation and engagement, they also reported the following:

70% learned more effectively in a gamified course.

79% enjoyed the competition associated with gamification.

MY PERSPECTIVE

ACHIEVEMENTS

Motivation & Engagement

As was evident in the survey, there was definitely improved motivation and classroom engagement for most students. This was typically the case for students who self-identified as "gamers," but many students who are not your traditional gamer enjoyed the course as well. These were typically students who were not as caught up in the narrative but instead with the competition and camaraderie that accompanied the gamified learning environment.

Students Assume Role of Teachers / Coaches

I also recognized a new dynamic when it came to students working on group projects and assignments. The competition created a type of positive peer pressure to make sure others in the group succeeded. It also created opportunities for group leaders to assume the role of "teacher" as they often times coached their teammates through a particularly difficult part of the course.

CHALLENGES

Management

As described in the post on management, I did develop a system for managing the gamified learning environment by piecing together several different resources and strategies. This was, however, not ideal. In the future, I will consider adopting a more robust tool or platform to conduct the digital portion of the course. (Ex. 3DGamelab, Class Dojo)

Narrative & Avatars

I also had a difficult time "selling" the idea of the narrative (storyline) and avatars. First, I do not think that I effectively wove the existing curriculum into the storyline effectively enough. I also did not make enough use of the avatars. Moving forward, I will make sure that each mission is tied more directly to the narrative, while creating differentiated tasks for students who are in different avatar classes. This will hopefully create more buy-in from those who were more reluctant to dive into this concept.

More Games & Competitions

Many students enjoyed when we learned and competed with actual games throughout the course. For instance, we had a few competitions with Geoguessr to learn geography that were a big hit with students. Although this course applied "gamification" as opposed to "game-based learning," there can still be a place for leveraging existing games effectively. Back when I taught American Government, I thought that the iCivics games were great, and so did my students. I will certainly add in more games and competitions to each scenario for next year.

NEXT POST: THE NEXT LEVEL (FINAL POST OF THE GAMIFICATION SERIES)

Complete Gamification Series

Part 12: Narrative / Avatars

Part 11: Leaderboards

Part 13: Managing Gamification

Part 14: Results

Part 15: The Next Level

GOOGLE DOC COMPILATION OF ALL POSTS

Wednesday, June 4, 2014

Gamification Series Part 13: Managing Gamification

For those of you interested in gamification yet unsure of how to actually implement it, here are some resources and ideas to help you actively manage a gamified course.

GRADING / TRACKING XP

Gamification Spreadsheet

This incredible Google spreadsheet by Mr. Matera is what I have used throughout the year. It enables you to enter and track XP along with the ability to display leaderboards for individuals, groups, and classes. It was also easy to embed different pages of the spreadsheet into our LMS.

I know of a few teachers who have used the 3D Gamelab platform as their classroom LMS with great success. Designed specifically with gamification in mind, this LMS has every feature that you would need in this type of learning environment.

BADGES & ACHIEVEMENTS

Class Badges gives educators the ability to customize and award badges to students based upon achievements, academic mastery, or even existing awards. I am not familiar with how well this integrates into other online environments, but its' recent partnership with EdStart leads me to believe that this tool has incredible potential moving forward.

Many educators who use Edmodo have most likely noticed the badge feature. If this is a platform that you currently use with your students, utilizing this makes sense since it is already built-in feature.

GOOGLE APPS

Even if you do not use an official badge app or LMS feature, you can of course develop your own badging system. For instance, this year I simply created a list of achievements for each scenario with a "badge" that was compiled into a Google Presentation and shared with the class.

CLASSROOM MANAGEMENT

Class Dojo is a customizable tool that helps provide feedback and reinforcements for positive classroom behaviors. There are also features to collect data and generate reports for parents and administrators.

As colleague (and awesome educator) Tim Downing states, "ClassCraft is like Class Dojo meets World of Warcraft." What makes this stand out is its emphasis on the role-playing and risk/reward system that plays out in the classroom.

Swiping In

"Swiping In" is a technique that I developed with colleague Brian Germain to help students (and us educators) monitor their progress in a mastery learning environment. Here is a post that describes the strategy in more detail as well as a quick video of student's demonstrating during class.

Mission Guides

These Google Documents help map out our gamified units. They include the type of mission, XP available, minimum XP to advance, assessments, and links to any resources and assignments needed.

Pacing

Of course, pacing is entirely up to the educator and how they would like to design their course. You can establish a more traditional, teacher-directed pace in which all students progress together, or you can completely open things up in an autonomous, self-paced learning environment. I have tried to find a middle ground, outlined below:

Self-paced units, but we all start the next unit together.
Each mission is graded, but those that students do not progress to ARE NOT given 0's.
50% of grade is based upon scored missions, other 50% based upon progress. (Based upon XP Scale)

If you know of any other resources to help manage a gamified classroom, please share below!

NEXT POST: RESULTS

Complete Gamification Series

Part 12: Narrative / Avatars

Part 11: Leaderboards

Part 13: Managing Gamification

Part 14: Results

Part 15: The Next Level

GOOGLE DOC COMPILATION OF ALL POSTS

Monday, June 2, 2014

NCAA March Madness-Style AP Review Game (2014 Edition)

As a former college basketball player as well as High School coach, it is no surprise that my favorite sporting event of the year is the NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament - MARCH MADNESS.

Last year, I decided to turn my AP European History review into a March Madness style simulation. The class worked together to narrow down the top 64 most influential figures/groups in modern European History. Students ranked them from 1-16 based upon four different historical eras, then collaboratively created a 70 slide Google Presentation and presented to the class. After this, they all filled out brackets to determine who they thought was the most influential. Next, we had a game-by-game class vote to determine the "class bracket." The student whose bracket was the closest match to the "class bracket" was the ultimate winner. Here are the instructions that I provided the students for this assignment. I also filmed each step of the process and created the following video depicting the game.

APEH MADNESS 2014

In March, Seth Watts (AP teacher from Southern California) stumbled upon the video above and asked a few questions regarding how to implement a similar game in his course. I suggested that if both of our classes were going to do this, why not collaborate! He was all in and away we went...

Creating the Field of 64

The first step was to select field of 64. We created the following Google Presentation that would be collaboratively develop by students in both of our classes. My students created the field for two eras, while Seth's students worked on the two others. After a few days, we had a completed field of 64 influential figures.

Completing the Student Brackets

Students in both classes were then provided with a blank bracket with all 64 figures. Each student filled out the bracket based upon their views of "historical significance." This was a helpful review for many since they simply did not recognize some of the people. It was also interesting that many students in Mr. Watts' course chose people that we did not discuss much (if at all) in the course. This was great since it provided a different perspective on European History that they were not exposed to here at PHS.

Round-by-Round Voting

To manage the voting, Seth suggested that we use Poll Everywhere for each match-up and have each class vote for one round per day. This worked out great as we were able to see exactly how all of the students in each class viewed the historical significance of each "player." Similar to the experience students had when collaborating on the presentation, many were surprised with how the students in California voted. This then led to great discussions about differing views on history from various angles (political, economic, social, religious, etc.)

RESULTS

I consider this year's game a greater success than last year's, primarily due to the collaboration with Seth's students in California. The feedback from students was mostly positive, with the only real negative being that there should have been more time for this review game. I agree, at times it seemed rushed and needed more than the 5-6 class days devoted to it. As with everything else in teaching, I'll have to reflect and iterate on this concept for next year. If you have any questions about the review game or would like to collaborate on one in the future, please reach out and let me know!

Thursday, May 29, 2014

Gamification Series Part 12: Narrative & Avatars

Speaking at GIE13 last summer, Professor Lee Sheldon made a fascinating point that I had never really considered.

It it is not necessarily the graphics or technology that make a "good" game. Instead, it is the ability to create a story that engages and enables players to become emotionally invested in the overarching narrative. (paraphrased)

How can this concept be applied in a classroom? One example is a project that Sheldon continues to develop at the Emergent Reality Lab at Rensselaer. He described how RPI students are taught Mandarin and Chinese culture by playing a live-action role playing game. From what I recall from his lecture, the back story involves students who are brought into custody in a Chinese airport and are being interrogated by authorities (role played by native Mandarin speakers at RPI). Another new project by Sheldon is call These Far Hills, "a game that teaches engineering by following the adventures of an extended Irish family emigrating to Mars." Source

If this all sounds a bit wild to you, it did to me as well. After considering this for a while, it did start to make sense that developing a narrative for the course could create a greater sense of purpose for students progressing through our gamified World History class. With a few weeks to go in the summer of 2013, I decided to give it a shot and dove in.

Step 1: Narrative - "The Blueprint"

I decided to create a narrative that would attempt to tie in all of the major historical eras in the curriculum. No easy task. Ultimately, I went with a post-apocalyptic theme that required students to enter a virtual world in order to study the achievements and mistakes of historical civilizations. The goal was then to develop a Blueprint for future societies based upon what was learned through study of these eras. Here is a copy of the complete BLUEPRINT narrative.

After students completed all of the missions for each scenario, as part of the narrative, they needed to Report to Mission Control. This assignment helped students reflect upon the era while also staying true to the narrative by considering how they could use their newly acquired knowledge to develop THE BLUEPRINT.

Step 2: Avatars

Part of the story line is that a team of experts from different facets of society have been chosen to work in teams and embark upon this journey. I therefore had students create avatars based upon certain classes of people. Each avatar class has designated skills and expertise, but students then created their own back story for their avatar. The classes included General, Judge, Senator, Professor, Business Leader, Artist, Scientist, and Citizen. Students could also create a new class if approved. Complete Avatar Class List Here.

Suggestions

Try to develop a narrative that is broad enough to have appeal for the most students, yet not so vague that it is meaningless.
Give students flexibility regarding their avatar and how it will play out in the story.
Although there was enthusiasm to start, make sure to keep tying in the narrative and avatars. If these components are not included and referred to regularly, many students will lose interest. I made this mistake by Quarter 3 and had a difficult time getting traction moving forward.
Consider making the narrative/avatar component optional. For instance, if a student wants to progress through each scenario yet is disinterested in the back story, I would allow it (as I did this year).
Have fun with it, be creative, and include the students in the process!

NEXT POST: MANAGING GAMIFICATION

Complete Gamification Series