Just in time for the new school year, here are 10 ideas for how to bring the best of games into the classroom
1. Give students a reason
In games, there’s always a good reason to do something. You go fight the bears because you need pelts. You solve the puzzle because you need to get through the door. In the classroom, however, often the reason is “to get a good grade.” Although this is a motivator for some students who see the connection between good grades and future success, many students can benefit from some additional motivation. Although we can’t always add game-like narratives to lessons, we can give students good reasons for why they’re doing what they’re doing.
2. Raise the stakes
In video games, the stakes are often high: save the world from zombies, protect the president’s daughter, escape the evil lab. Everything the player does in the game is to achieve this overarching goal, which adds richness and meaning to tasks that sometimes are no more than button-pushing. By finding ways to raise the stakes in the classroom, you can add the same meaningfulness to school activities that a compelling narrative adds to games. A common way to do this is to add competition, but you can also raise the stakes by connecting what your class is doing to the community, creating something meaningful or useful together, or solving a real problem in your school.
3. Lower the risk
Even though video games raise the stakes, they are actually very low-risk endeavors. If you make a mistake, you’re immediately transported back to your last save point. Many games let you pick the save point, so if you’re worried that your next move won’t be successful, you can save first and risk nothing by trying. However, school environments often do not give students low-risk opportunities to try something new. When everything is graded and counts toward an overall average, students are given an incentive to “play it safe” and not try something creative or expressive. Try giving your students many opportunities to fail and then try again.
4. Give quality feedback
What happens when a player gets sent back to a save point? There’s a bit of loading time, which provides them with an opportunity to reflect and plan out strategy for the next time around. Players quickly learn to adjust their strategy based on what went wrong (or right!) the last time around. One of the weaknesses of the traditional grading system is that a simple letter or number doesn’t provide enough feedback for students to meaningfully adjust their behavior. By providing good feedback and time to reflect and try again, students can learn from the testing experience.
5. Help students “level up”
Many role-playing games give each player a numeric score that is their overall level, and then individual scores for in-game skills. Levels are increased by using those skills to complete quests, and very rarely is a level decreased for any reason. This is very different from a traditional school environment, where everyone “levels up” together at the beginning of the school year, and they are all provided the same challenges regardless of actual skill proficiency. In addition, grade averages can fluctuate throughout the year, and even throughout four years of high school, meaning that fantastic chemistry skill can be quickly overshadowed by a failing grade in creative writing. Providing assessment in the form of “leveling up” means that the highest levels are attainable for everyone, no matter how many times they’ve failed getting there.
6. Form guilds
Some of the most popular video games are Massively Multiplayer Online games, where players connect online and attempt quests as a “guild.” Within these guilds, players practice negotiation, collaboration, and leadership skills. In addition, since every player has different in-game abilities, every guild member brings something unique and valuable to the group. However, many group activities in the classroom end up being a solo project for the student in the group who cares most about getting a good grade. This means that the student who needs the practice least is doing all the work, and those who could most use the experience are getting nothing out of it. For your next group project, try taking some inspiration from guilds, and give students different tools, information, or resources so that they all come to the group with a unique offering.
7. Let students cheat
Well, maybe not all the time! But there is something powerful about being able to help out a fellow player. Take a look at all the tutorials and walkthroughs on YouTube, and you’ll see gamers showing off what they know in order to help others succeed. By giving students appropriate ways of helping each other out, the weaker students will get practice taking ownership of their work, and the stronger students will get practice articulating what they know.
8. Give three stars
In casual games like Angry Birds and Candy Crush, there often is a metric at the end of a level indicating how many stars you’ve earned. One star allows you to move on to the next level, but two stars gives you bragging rights, and three stars shows that you’ve achieved the maximum number of points. These star ratings and associated rewards give players an incentive to come back and replay levels that they’ve already completed, in hopes of getting more stars. You can do this in a classroom by giving students incentives to try again at just-passable work, or to give the superstar students something challenging to strive for. However, the power of this system is in the choices – students must decide they want to try for more “stars” themselves!
9. Don’t memorize
Quiz and trivia games have their place, but for the vast majority of games, memorization is not a requirement. Often players will need to know something in order to be successful, but their success depends on their ability to find and apply that information, not memorize and recite it. Classroom activities can mimic games by simply providing students with a problem to solve, and letting them determine the necessary information, find it, and apply their newfound knowledge to the solution.
10. Play games!
There many quality educational games available to teachers right now (check out GameUp for a start) and more continue to be released all the time. In addition, there are many resources to help teachers bring games like Portal and Minecraft into their classrooms.
And don’t just leave the playtime to your students. Pick up a controller and jump in!
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