Serious Game Attributes in Gamification

Today I have read an article on how to gamify teaching from NeoAcademic.com in which the writer makes the argument against people who are against gamification in learning. They state that "A course designer has a technology in hand. The course designer has heard that the technology is GREAT. But the course designer doesn’t actually have a clear reason to adopt it. So the course designer just arbitrarily slaps it on all sorts of situations that don’t make even a little bit of sense, observe that gamification doesn’t accomplish what it was never intended to accomplish, and declare it a failure." (Landers 2015)

Landers is telling us that early adopters of the idea of gamification applied it to everything incorrectly and because of this it inevitably failed. These early adopters would have chalked the failure down to the tools and then left them behind. However when applied thoughtfully and meaningfully these methods can far exceed expectations in regards to class engagement.

He then goes on to present us with the following graph of elements from serious games, and examples of how they can be applied to a teaching environment. 

Game Attribute	Definition	Example of Gamification
Action Language	The method and interface by which communication occurs between a player and the game itself	To participate in an online learning activity, students are now required to use game console controllers (e.g. a PlayStation controller).
Assessment	The method by which accomplishment and game progress are tracked	In a learning activity, points are used to track the number of correct answers obtained by each learner as each learner completes the activity.
Conflict/Challenge	The problems faced by players, including both the nature and difficulty of those problems	A small group discussion activity is augmented such that each small group competes for the “best” answer.
Control	The degree to which players are able to alter the game, and the degree to which the game alters itself in response	A small group discussion activity is restructured such that each decision made by each small group influences the next topic that group will discuss.
Environment	The representation of the physical surroundings of the player	A class meeting is moved from a physical classroom to a 3D virtual world.
Game Fiction	The fictional game world and story	Lectures, tests, and discussions are renamed adventures, monsters, and councils, respectively.
Human Interaction	The degree to which players interact with other players in both space and time	Learners participate in an online system which reports on their assignment progress to other students as they work.
Immersion	The affective and perceptual experience of a game	When learning about oceanography, the walls of the classroom are replaced with monitors displaying real-time images captured from the sea floor.
Rules/Goals	Clearly defined rules, goals, and information on progress towards those goals, provided to the player.	When completing worksheet assignments on tablet computers, a progress bar is displayed to indicate how much of the assignment has been completed (but not necessarily the number of correct answers, which would fall under “Assessment”).

Using these ideas and definitions I will revisit my first gamified worksheet on gravity and try to include some of these elements on top of the narrative. I will then seek feedback from subject experts on the sheet and if approved, I will move to make a template or pipeline for future worksheets. I want to include constraints in the document and requirements as to assess future worksheets by.

Landers, R. (2015). How to Gamify Teaching - NeoAcademic. [online] NeoAcademic. Available at: http://neoacademic.com/2015/01/28/gamify-teaching-processes-gamification/ [Accessed 2 Dec. 2015].