Participants will discuss and test the introduction of game elements into education. The workshop is part of the three-session cycle devoted to games as tools.
Why do people of all ages like playing Tetris, Bejeweled and Candy Crush? Because these games combine simple challenges with progress indicators and a reward system. Training through various tasks, levels, and special achievement badges creates a clever system that motivates the player to return to the system time and again. The elements of this system are called game mechanics.
Like Lego construction toys, game mechanics can be used to create game-like experiences in non-game situations (gamification) or games to facilitate particular education tasks. In the first part of the workshop, participants will look into game mechanics focused on achievement, competence, big ideas, planning, and autonomy.
Game mechanics are very flexible and can be adapted to particular educational needs. But how does gamification work in education? There is not a single answer: creators of any game can invent their own mechanics or combine the already existing ones. The success of gamification in education relies on the game mechanics being appropriate for the educational content. In the second part of the workshop, participants will work on particular cases.