I have written previously on Gamification and Game-Based Learning and while this can be effective, it concerned me that there is a danger that (for the students) the learning activity might become more about winning the game than learning. This is true for Game-based Learning and badly designed Gamification. One of the things that attracted me to research Gameful Learning is that it seemed to be a way of keeping the positive aspects of Gamified Learning while maintaining learning as the goal for students.
In developing the principles of Gameful Learning Fishman has progressed Gamification and made connections with other learning theories such as Vigotsky’s Zone of Proximal Development and theories about motivation including Achievement Goal Theory.
School is a game
What is a game? Fishman does some analysis of games and concludes that there are key elements that define a game.
- A games has rules. These may not necessarily make any sense in the real world, but they are consistent within the game.
- A game has goals.
- A game has its own context or environment.
Looking at this definition we can see that school is a game, just not a very good or well designed one.
Looking at this from the other direction, games are good teachers. It is just that what they teach is often not very useful.
The core of Fishman’s MOOC is about redesigning learning so that it is a good game rather than a bad one.
In my next post I will investigate the principles of a good game.