“Game On: Action Research in a Game-Based Classroom” by Kelli Stair Introduction
High school kids say the darnedest things. Last May, at end of the school year, one of my underachieving freshman boys turned to me, and said, “You know, I would have done a lot more work for you if I could’ve earned some badges.” Those simple words catalyzed a chain reaction in my thinking, shaking free and linking several previously unconnected ideas, and drove my summer research on gamification in learning. I knew that if I wanted my students to become better writers, I needed them to write regularly. Unfortunately, the idea of writing was so off-putting to many of them that it was hard to motivate them to start writing, stay focused on writing, and finish writing. I wanted to know if I could create a classroom environment that worked like a game, one in which students were motivated to complete increasingly more complex writing activities in order to get XP (experience points) or badges and overall “win” the class. As a gamer, I had first-hand knowledge of the motivating power of badges or awards to help players persevere through difficult or time-consuming tasks. However, I had never connected that concept to my teaching. Once I considered one gaming feature as a potential motivator for student productivity, I began to consider others as well: levels, achievements, winning situations, quests, and goals, to name a few. However, the concept of a solely game-based classroom did not spontaneously generate; several books contributed to valuing the use of games and gaming features as foundational concepts rather than merely as support or enrichment tools. Reading Jane McGonigal’s Reality is Broken completely validated and redefined gaming for me as more than entertainment. The overall concept is that games provide fixes for a broken reality, fulfilling real human needs in a way that reality’s complexity often cannot. Human beings have both psychological and social needs that must be met for people to be healthy. McGonigal’s contention is that reality cannot always provide opportunities for people to meet these needs and that games can. In fact, well-designed games are popular because they fulfill real-world needs unmet in the real world. Storytelling to create meaning, collaboration for common achievement, working towards specific goals in zones of proximal development, optimizing failure as an opportunity for improvement, and utilizing meaningful work to increase happiness: games provide structured, accessible, and reliable opportunities to meet basic human needs with which reality simply cannot compete.