Students of tomorrow are demanding the learning support that is appropriate for their situation and current context. With the sudden rise of a novel coronavirus around the globe, people have started to embrace technology very closely. However, the education industry is no exception. Smartphones have become our new teachers. It is no surprise if in the coming years the study of technology gets seamlessly integrated into the mainstream curriculum instead of viewing it as an add-on. With online learning becoming highly influential and one of the prominent cost-effective tools for study, experimenting with new digital means of learning has become the need of the hour to make schooling and training accessible to the privileged and underprivileged students globally.
Some distinctive features that play a key role in gamification are:
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Welcomes all kinds of users
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Helps take up challenges/ tasks that enhance user’s progress.
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Motivates to execute tasks to accumulate points
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Levels help users stay consistent by keeping up the excitement
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Badges provide rewarding experiences for the completion of a task
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Ranking helps users strive to perform better
The gamification in the education market is however projected to grow from USD 450million in 2018 to USD 1800million by 2013 at a compound annual growth rate. It is also found that gamification exerts a positive influence on memory retention. To understand better here are few examples of the influence of gamification in a classroom setting:
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Awarding points for meeting academic and non-academic objectives
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Creating competition within the classroom
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Creating playful barriers
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Using different levels, badges and other methods to calculate progression.
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Giving learning badges instead of grades
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Creating challenges that emphasize different approaches
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Letting students set their own goals, track their own progress in a fun, social, visual, and personalized way.
Our society for the past few years has been ignoring evolution when it comes to education. Perhaps, this is one of our greatest limitations as a society. However, we can expect future generations to adapt to new innovations in the learning industry through methods of gamification and more in the coming years. Companies that provide Android game design and development services have mounting potential.
Let us now peg on to understanding the major factors pertaining to the growth of gamification in the educational market:
Increases sales: Traditional sales training techniques have been seeking improvisation. Product development, marketing, and sales operations have the information they want to get out to sales, but when these are blended together can create chaos. Integrating gamification can thus be beneficial in teaching sales employees content applying to real-life sale scenarios in a way it maximizes their learning and retention of information.
Better learning experience: Gamification in learning can turn a boring classroom into a fun learning space. The use of this amplifies learner's engagement in a classroom, thus creating a fun-filled experience whilst retaining memory the best possible way. It is quoted right that anything we learn with pleasure, is never forgotten. Fun added to learning is therefore the best educational experience.
Prompts behavioral change: Gamification in education also displays social benefits. It helps healthy modification of behavior among students. When implied among a group of students with face-to-face interaction, it encourages human’s intrinsic need for competition. Gamification thus aims to encourage cooperation challenges and force healthy competition that produces desired results. It aids what the traditional classroom fails to achieve in terms of providing practical life lessons.
Enriched learning environment: Gamification not just instills a fun-filled experience among students but also employs an effective and informal learning environment. This also helps learners practice real-life situations and challenges in a safe environment. By using video game design and elements in the learning environment students are being highly motivated. The goal here is basically to maximize engagement and make learning enjoyable by picking out the learner's interests.
Instant feedback: The use of game aesthetics in the learning environment provides instant feedback for learners to be aware of what they know along with understanding what they should know. This facilitates better learning engagement and thereby improves memory retention.
Skill development: Gamification fulfills most learning needs and promotes the acquisition of skills like product sales, customer support, soft skills, awareness creation, onboarding, and compliance services. This stems from the belief in fostering effective collaboration in different contexts such as customer engagement, employee achievement, and social faithfulness.
Employment recruitment: Applying gamification in the hiring process is beneficial to both the candidates and employer in terms of understanding job fit and retention. It gives candidates exposure to the work they would be doing and helps them decide if the job will suit them in the long run.
Encourages scaffolded learning: When teachers take an extra step in enhancing the learning experience by using game design and elements, students feel supported to learn something new. They feel like they are given better opportunities for learning and that they hold the opportunity to use that knowledge independently.
Pros of gamification in learning:
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Allows students to become more technologically literate.
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Increases engagement
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Provides instant feedback
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Motives students and creates enthusiasm
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Allows to improve social connections
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Students learn to become self-reliant by learning by themselves.
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With the help of gamification, increased online learning diversifies the pool of educated students across the globe.
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Students can opt for remote learning.
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Enhances student’s self-confidence.
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Encourages students to take up the development of AI.
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Boosts student memory retention
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Keeps students engaged
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Motivates to solve real-world problems
Cons of gamification in learning:
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Immediate feedback decreases student attention span
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Increased support and maintenance related costs
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Time-consuming process
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Student assessment gets difficult
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Requires too much effort and study
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Difficult to fully understand the game and objectives
The increasing success of gamification in education proves that today’s youth are seeking more digital-oriented approaches to learning. All these aspects that impact learners create a significant performance gain for organizations. There are many new opportunities that favor increased engagement in both modes of education – classroom and online. Since it has both pros and cons, it is important to first thoroughly consider important ideas and ways before choosing how gamification could support you.
