In the classroom one of the most difficult times for our students is pre-examination. This often seems to be even more difficult in the Maths classroom. The number of emails from parents as we go towards Exam time increases and students generally worry more. One way I changed my practice was to use Classcraft in the classroom. This is a role-playing based online game. I felt that if I could foster the idea that the students were on a quest to defeat the exam together, we would see better results. This idea lets me rethink the roles of me and my learners. I was no longer the teacher but the game master and my students each had a personalised digital avatar to adventure with. I spent vast amounts of my youth chasing Snotlings and pretending to be a werewolf so this change felt really exciting for me. The girls in class were excited as well and loved to personalise their own avatars giving them roles and powers. I was excited about the class and really enjoyed setting up different adventures based around defeating the end of year exam. It worked very well for some of my more cautious learners; those that often relied on the teacher's knowledge. Instead, they now worked more collaboratively to tackle the problems and did not rely on me. The engagement in class increased and students began writing up problems on the board and their teams would work together to teach each other content, trying to tackle the more difficult questions. If I further analyse this change in my practice, it was clear to me the students had to develop a new view of our roles in the classroom. There are a number of theories on why gamifying learning works well. Curtiss Murphy talks about motivation as one of the biggest factors in improving learning, and by increasing the motivation for students to work and succeed as a team, I had unlocked more agency in my learners. The experience in my classroom also seemed to echo Jane McGonigal's concepts of “social fabric”, “Blissful Productivity” and “Epic meaning”. We were no longer students in the classroom, we were a band of warriors slaying the Demon of Algebra. How else could I have developed this idea for my students? Could the whole exam have been a gamified experience instead of a standard test? The results in the exam were an improvement from the previous year, but not for every student. Could an examination be more gameful? In what way? Imagine an exam were every student went in with the same motivation I had seen in the game? Rather than an independent closed book exercise, we were thrown into some fantasy realm where we could use the skills we had been equipped with to solve problems. What effect would this have on our learners? ![]() What further action am I going to take with the knowledge about the motivation my learners have experienced in the classroom due to this change in my practice though? That is a really wicked problem and I have tried to develop different gameful ways of delivering content but none with as much success as Class Craft. Would the novelty eventually wear off if all the Maths content was delivered this way? Gamification is a wonderful and creative way to approach learning but would it be sustainable in my practice? If it is to be, I would have to call for a more collaborative approach. Who knows what kind of awesome adventure me and a colleague could develop for our learners!? References:
Kapp, Karl M.. The Gamification of Learning and Instruction : Game-Based Methods and Strategies for Training and Education, Center for Creative Leadership, 2012 Curtiss Murphy, Why Games Work and the Science of Learning, Alion Science and Technology https://www.ted.com/talks/jane_mcgonigal_gaming_can_make_a_better_world https://www.educationcounts.govt.nz/publications/schooling/109306 Finlay, L. (2009). Reflecting on reflective practice. PBPL. Retrieved from http://www.open. ac.uk/opencetl/sites/www.open.ac.uk.opencetl/files/files/ecms/web-content/Finlay-(2008)-Reflecting-on-reflective-practice-PBPL-paper-52.pdf ~Duncan Trickey
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