Game On: Action Research in a Game-Based Classroom

“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.

Before reading this book, I knew that sometimes games would call to me. I would be frustrated with work, with relationships, with everyday living and I would sit down to play a game. If I chose the game wisely, I would become completely immersed in it for a period of time, losing myself in the world of play--challenges, strategies, using my mind and my failures to overcome obstacles. I returned from this world of gaming with my frustrations at least partially alleviated, as if overcoming obstacles in a gaming situation created a more confident perspective on my ability to overcome obstacles in the real world. Sometimes, you just need a win, and life does not always provide opportunities for accessible, reliable wins.

Once I recognised this need in myself and McGonigal’s research validated gaming as an empowering way to alleviate the frustrations of the world, I began to see my students’ gaming differently. When students would get caught playing games on their cell phones, I would be frustrated, as if they were insulting me or my teaching by being disengaged. Upon reflection, however, I began to recognise that gaming for them was also a way to feel empowered, to alleviate the frustrations of the real world--a world that arbitrarily changed the rules without warning, gave them tasks that were vastly above or below their learning zones, and mandated expectations that in no way meshed with their individual needs. When you stop to think about how little power students have in the course of a school day--how few opportunities to satisfy their curiosity or meet their personal needs or treat failure as an opportunity--it is no wonder that they turn to games to fix that broken reality. After this perspective-altering realization, the only question for me was how to use those game features to motivate and focus students on classroom learning.

Another resource that helped define and clarify for me concepts related to gamification includes Carol Dweck’s ​Mindset. Dweck identifies a fixed mindset as the belief that you are who you are and won’t change much. A growth mindset is the belief that who you are is a process and that you can always change and grow. Students with a fixed mindset have a fixed belief of who they are as a person and a learner. Upon reading this, I immediately identified former students with a fixed mindset and recalled how challenging it was to push them to go beyond what they believed was their set potential. Every student satisfied with a D-, every honors student who thought she should get an A regardless of the quality of work, every student who ever said they were not “good at” something as an excuse to stop trying--these students were all stuck in a fixed mindset.

As a teacher, once you realize that the real issue is mindset, teaching is no longer about finding different ways to approach the content; it is about finding ways to change the mindset. A growth mindset is necessary to be successful in tackling challenging situations, and nothing helps develop a growth mindset more surreptitiously than a game.

Games develop growth mindsets because they necessitate growth in dealing with increasingly difficult challenges. As long as those challenges consistently fall within zones of proximal

development--which well-crafted games do by design--learning, a.k.a. growth, occurs. When game developers create games, they work mindfully to increase the challenge of a game level to move just beyond the challenge of the previous level; in other words, each level gets a little harder. If a level increases the challenge too much, gamers give up; too little, gamers get bored.

Inherent in gaming is the creation or support of a growth mindset because the gamer must constantly improve in order to level up and meet the challenges of the next level. No one starts a brand new game and thinks they can immediately defeat the boss level. Failure becomes a lesson from which to learn; success leads to harder challenges. Educational games and game-based features also promote growth mindsets that support student motivation as learners.

Embedded in games and working within zones of proximal development towards specific goals is the mental state known as flow. According to psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, flow is the experience of being completely immersed in an activity. In his book ​Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience, he details what factors lead to this experience, what the positive psychological benefits and motivational features entail, and the ways in which people can experience more flow, and hence more satisfaction, in their lives. On numerous occasions, I have witnessed the effects of flow. Students will be completely immersed in an activity or discussion and will be startled as if shaken from sleep when the bell rings. When a person is so involved in something that time flies, when the act of focusing energizes a person, when it feels as though the only thing that matters is the task at hand--that is the experience of flow. During a state of flow, focus, motivation, creativity, and a sense of purpose all increase. Obviously, this state cannot be maintained indefinitely; however, students need opportunities to experience this optimized state of thinking, to be completely immersed in educational activities, and to feel the satisfaction induced by flow. Game-based features create scaffolded learning opportunities that increase the likelihood of achieving flow.

As I began envisioning a fully-fledged game-based class, one in which all activities and assessments became a part of The Game, I knew that the structure would likely cause skepticism from my colleagues. I, myself, have shuddered to see teachers use games as fluff, as substitutes for real learning, as a way to keep students occupied. I knew that skepticism would be real and valid; I would need to prove that gamifying my classroom was beneficial to students in their learning process, that it was in some way fundamentally better than a traditional system of learning. After all, if it was merely equal to traditional learning, why spend so much of my time creating the class and students’ time learning to navigate the game?

I began to brainstorm ways in which traditional educational features--letter grades, due dates, mandatory assignments, single opportunities for completion--failed to meet the needs of my diverse learners. While several ideas occurred to me, the one failure of these more traditional features that games and gaming features most effectively addressed was motivation. Traditional

features of education failed to motivate my students to produce considerable amounts of high quality work. Embedded in this idea of student motivation is the idea of perseverance when tackling challenging tasks, another way that traditional features have failed my students.

According to my reading, game-based features should increase motivation--even for difficult tasks--and make it more likely that students produce high quality work.

Evolution of The Game: Conception to Reality Behind the Scenes My goal as action researcher became to first create a learning environment in my language lab class using game-based features including levels, XP (experience points), badges, a leaderboard, quests and quest choice, and a game-winning goal. I envisioned a web-based repository of writing activities that students could choose from, activities that would then be assessed for mastery and awarded points. Those points would accumulate to gauge student progress toward an overall goal. I created this learning environment using 3DGameLab.org, recently renamed as Rezzly.com.

In some ways, turning these writing activities into a game was simple: assignments became quests, quests awarded XP when mastered, a series of quests resulted in a badge earned. The same backwards design organization of assignments and assessments from my previous writing classes transitioned fairly easily into the new game-based structure with only minor adjustments.

In other ways, game-based features created a necessary schism with my traditionally-structured classroom in terms of grading, grades, and my role as teacher. Game-based instruction necessitates mastery learning techniques with respect to grading. When grading for mastery, the focus is on whether or not students have mastered a particular concept. For some types of assessments, like vocabulary quizzes, I simply used a cut score of 80% to determine mastery; if a student earned an 80% or higher on a quiz, she got the XP for the quest. I added a bonus award for 100% as an incentive for excellent work.

However, my writing assessments and assignments tend to be more open-ended and holistic which forced me to determine exactly what was involved in mastery acquisition for grading. I created three types of grading protocols for different kinds of quests. For the most basic quests, those which I only needed students to complete as a participation check, I used the auto-assess feature to automatically award a small amount of XP when submitted. These quests included vocabulary transfers into students’ quizlet accounts, short writing brainstorms and lists of

possible writing ideas, quick reflection surveys, introduction videos to software tools, and other tasks that were more participatory in nature.

Since game-based features include student choice, I generated a variety of skills-based quests.

These quests could be short writing, grammar, vocabulary, reading, or research tasks that honed a specific skill. Mastery for these tasks involved demonstrating the particular skill of focus.

Students posted screenshots, replied to a discussion board, or shared original examples to demonstrate mastery. For example, vocabulary study quests asked students to play a game on Quizlet to study their vocabulary words and take a screenshot to prove their score. For these short, skills-based quests, I quickly checked for only the skill of focus; if students demonstrated the skill, they received XP; if not, their quests were returned with a note from me on how to get the quest accepted.

Complex writing tasks and assignments involve scaffolding, models, and direct teaching of concepts. For these quests, I used instructional videos--often played in class for whole group activities--practice tasks, quests that involved reading and analyzing exemplar texts, discussion and revision processes, and many choices in writing topics. In assessing mastery of these quests, I used a flexible, student-specific, progress-based definition of mastery. While I expected a base level of mastery from every student for every quest, I also challenged students to grow as writers by returning quests that were below a particular student’s potential, even though technically meeting the minimum mastery requirements. It is important to note that the returned assignments do not affect a student’s grade or amount of XP they can earn. A returned quest simply goes back to the student’s in-progress list with a note about what needs to be done for the quest to be accepted.

This level of quests challenged my ideas of grading and grades more than any other. I had to ask, what is mastery for this task? What is necessary and what is merely encouraged? How can I challenge students who have mastered the basics to continue improving and how can I reward students who do not merely master, but excel at the content? How should my expectations change for different students who are at different levels of writing, thinking, or both? And most importantly, how can I make sure that students stay in their zones of proximal development, that is, that they stay engaged and are neither too bored nor too frustrated to grow as writers. Big questions, requiring constant philosophical negotiations.

Context for the Study: A Game-Based Class

As these ideas coalesced into a plan to bring gamification to my teaching practice, I knew that there were issues that I needed to address. First, I needed an organizational system that worked for me. I could assign points to leveled assignments and create a system for leveling up and winning, but I needed some tool that would organize the process. If the process involved too much paperwork on my end, I knew that I could never keep up with it. I wanted my time to be used creating meaningful tasks that built educational experiences for students, not recording and adding and calculating points or keeping track of all the data. Sticky notes and spreadsheets were not going to work. After testing several online gaming management systems, I decided on 3D Game Lab, a web-based gamification tool from Boise State University. Key gamification features that informed my choice of 3D Game Lab include levels, winning conditions, a built-in badge system, auto-assessment options, prerequisites to viewing quests, quest choice, a leaderboard, and a user-friendly layout.

3D Game Lab Organization and Terminology Dashboard:​ organizes quests, rewards, groups, and announcements Quest:​ an activity that students complete to earn XP XP:​ experience points tracked by a progress bar on the dashboard; earned for completing quests, leveling up, and achieving rewards Rewards:​ awards, badges, and achievements Awards: bonus XP awarded for work that exceeds basic mastery and miscellaneous bonus points (spirit day dress up, bringing in supplies to share, etc.

Badges: bonus XP and downloadable icon representing mastery of specific quests Achievements: bonus XP for leveling up or completing certain badges Level Up:​ earning XP to meet weekly goals gives students a new rank Leaderboard:​ organizes all students by highest XP Game-Winning Goal:​ number of XP and badges required to win The Game

While some of my current lessons adapted well to the gaming system, I knew that to successfully employ gaming features I would need to break larger assignments into more manageable “chunks.” I started with smaller quests (for small amounts of XP) that helped students gather writing ideas--lists, quick writes, and brainstorms. Students completed these quests in writers’ notebooks and pasted them into the completion boxes within 3DGameLab to earn XP. Once students earned a certain amount of XP--indicating that they had completed a few of these small quests--larger writing quests would open asking students to write short first drafts of stories or even just flesh out story ideas. Finally, students earned enough XP to open up even larger quests connected to a narrative badge. Each quest has XP associated with it, so regardless of whether

students earn a badge by completing all quests, they will still earn XP that helps them level up and win the game.

The first quest needed to earn a narrative badge was an introduction quest that we completed together in class. Completion and approval of this quest opened three new quests that students could work on independently; these quests reiterated content and allowed students to practice what they had learned. Students would not see these quests until they had completed the prerequisite quest that taught the skill or lesson. Once these new quests opened, students could choose which--or how many--quests to complete.

Upon completion of this series of four short quests, students received a badge called “Narrative Player.� This badge unlocked more narrative quests that moved students deeper into the topic, and so on. The idea of badges organizes quests into groups, with rewards for completing all quests within a group. Badges also open new series of quests as students are ready to complete them, eliminating a tangle of random quests that students must navigate through to find the quests they choose to do. Finally, badges are signs of completion, showing that students have mastered specific content. One great feature of 3DGameLab is that badges can be uploaded to Mozilla Backpack and shared in online environments. Just like scouting badges in the physical world, online badges show what students have accomplished.

Strategic planning for badges, quests, and prerequisites is vital to successful game-based education. Not only did scaffolding of quests need to be purposeful, but how quests opened and what prerequisites opened them determined how students progressed through the game. Student choice of which quests to complete is essential to the mission of game-based learning. However, some quests needed to be done before others, some were mandatory, and some needed to be open for whole-class work. As carefully and thoughtfully planned as I attempted to be, The Game (as I referred to my class) went through several necessary on-the-fly revisions.

Four key characteristics differentiate The Game from my previous, more traditionally-structured English class: student-choice activities, no homework, no due dates, and no graded assignments.

Students choose which quests to work on; quests are thoughtfully constructed to open only after completing prerequisite quests. Students may work at home but do not have to. There are no due dates, although several quests, such as weekly reflections, have end dates; quests with end dates are never required quests. Finally, quests are not graded; they are accepted. If student work does not meet the quality of my expectations for that quest, it is returned with comments so that students can try again. There are no penalties for not meeting expectations the first time, encouraging persistence in the mastery of concepts. A poorly completed, rushed, or misinterpreted assignment does not affect a student’s overall class grade.

Instead of assignment grades, students gain experience points for successfully completing quests.

The game management system keeps track of XP (experience points) as student quests are approved. Students work toward a game-winning situation, in this case earning 3500 XP. Quests range anywhere from 10 to 200 XP; badges--awards earned for completing a series of quests--earn XP; awards for excellent work, completing five quests in a day, and other incentives for positive work behavior provide opportunities for XP as well. Once a student has earned 3500 XP, she has won the game. Game-winners receive an overall grade of A for the class.

To help students stay on track to win the game, I created game levels that correspond to weekly points needed to win the game. If a student levels up every week, he is on track to win the game.

If he falls behind, he can see exactly how many XP he needs to get back on track. Using experience points helps students self-manage their grades; students can choose which available quests to work on in order to reach the XP that they need weekly to stay on track. My readings about the 3DGameLab system indicated that students could go beyond the game-winning situation if they won early. To further encourage this, I created an Uber-Win situation of 5000 XP--an almost 43% increase in XP over the game-winning level. If a student earned 5000 XP, she was entered into a drawing for a $50 gift card. The Uber-Win situation encouraged students who won the game early to continue working on quests and badges. Overall, about 7000 XP were possible in the game, far more than any student would have time to earn.

The embedded leaderboard in 3DGameLab records changes in and ranks students by XP in The Game. Students could complete quests and immediately see how they compared with other students in The Game. The leaderboard increased competition to win, to win first, and to lead the class on a weekly basis.

Participants and Setting I introduced The Game at the beginning of the year to Academy freshmen. Freshman Academy is a support environment for incoming freshmen who are considered at risk of failing in their freshmen year based on junior high standardized tests scores, core class grades, attendance, and teacher recommendations. Students with chronic, highly disruptive behavioral issues are typically excluded from the Academy unless teacher recommendations indicate that the Academy support structure would likely alleviate those behavioral issues. Freshman Academy cohorts tend to have a higher percentage of special education and ESL students, although the criteria for admittance excludes most level 1 and 2 ESL learners. Of this year’s cohort, 44 of 78 students required WIDA testing for language proficiency and 21 had IEPs. The demographic breakdown is as follows: 47 hispanic, 22 white, 3 black, 6 multiracial, 33 girls and 45 boys.

The Freshman Academy classes--Language Arts, Reading, Algebra, and Biology--support students by having all academy teachers share about 80 students and a common teacher prep period for meetings. In addition, special events that inspire motivation such as celebration days and field trips create a sense of community. Small class sizes and teacher ability to manipulate student schedules allow for intentional grouping based on students’ needs. My language arts class has a class set of laptops available daily and all students have access to Google Apps for Education.

In this year’s cohort, 14 of 78 academy students had either ESL English, a reading remediation class, or a separate special education class instead of regular level English 8 the previous year.

Of those 14 students, 3 had an A and 5 had a D or F. Of the 64 students who took regular 8th grade English class, only 2 students had an A with 24 students receiving a D or F. Attendance also tends to be an issue for many academy students, with an average of 7.3 days absent for the cohort’s eighth grade year. Sixteen students had more than 10 absences with one student having 36 absences in her eighth grade year.

A

B

C

D

F

Unavailable

Alternative English Class

3

3

2

4

1

1

Regular English Class

2

15

18

18

6

5

Data Collection and Analysis Three methods of data collection--student reflections, surveys, teacher field notes and reflection--comprised the data used to answer my initial research question: How do students respond to game-based features, specifically with respect to motivation? Every week, I asked students to reflect on some aspect of their learning, with specific questions spread over the trimester that involved them as participants in this game-based learning environment. The following are the four reflection questions specifically related to game-based learning that students answered in weeks 1, 3, 5, and 7 respectively.

1. How is this class different than other classes you’ve taken and what are your thoughts or feelings about those differences?

2. What features motivate you in our game-based class--leveling up, rank on the leaderboard, earning badges? Do you like to choose what to work on? Do you like working at your own pace without due dates, tests, or deadlines?

3. Reflect on how you play the game in class and out of class. Explain to a “new student” how this class works.

4. Which features of this class help you as a learner and which could you do without?

I also administered two surveys on motivation one at the beginning of the year and one at the end of first trimester after 12 weeks of using the game-based learning system.. These surveys were administered as part of The Game and students chose if--and when-- to take the surveys. The number of students who took the beginning-of-the-year survey (37) and the date they took it versus the number who took the end-of-the-trimester survey (58) show students’ growing familiarity and comfort with the game-based system.

I kept reflection and field notes throughout the trimester--recording particular student responses, identifying student behaviors, gathering anecdotal evidence of student motivation, and asking students to reflect, comment, and clarify with respect to their own work behaviors and motivation.

Using these three sources of data, I identified patterns concerning how students view themselves and their own motivation: 1 )how each individual’s motivation compares to previous English classes, 2) what features are indicated by students as most motivating, 3) how students behave in class with respect to game-based features, and 4) how students describe and evaluate their own motivation.

Data Analysis How do students respond to a class developed around game-based features? Summarized below are the key takeaways regarding how students responded to this particular game-based class.

Takeaway 1: Students indicated a motivational increase in this game-based class.

Informal beginning of the year interest inventories indicate that few of this cohort’s students enjoyed writing before entering this writing class. In general, my students tend to write the minimal amount required using mostly simple sentences, basic vocabulary, and generalized

descriptions. When students find out on day one that language lab is a writing class, they verbally and through body language express their disappointment in the idea of writing. If given a choice, most language lab students would rather read than write.

“I had to win, no matter the cost. I needed to win.”

End of the trimester survey results comparing motivation in previous English (reading and writing) classes reveal that over 76% of students felt an increase in motivation in the game-based class, with 29% of those expressing a big increase in motivation. In analyzing responses, I coded any positive indication of motivation as an increase and only use of superlatives, identification of large numbers, or a contrast of highly negative to highly positive as a big increase. For example, one student response ranged last year’s motivation as a 1 and this year’s as 1000. Other superlatives that indicated a big increase included “much/a lot more motivated, more motivated than ever, needed to win, nothing to compare.”

“I actually have a lot more motivation in this class than my previous [English] class because it’s a new way of learning and it’s so simple to get yourself involved in the game.”

“Last year I wasn't motivated at all and this year because it's a game of XP points, I have gone crazy for it.”

Of students that indicated neutral/same responses (24%), the most frequent descriptor described the class as different without indicating positive or negative difference. Most notably, while some students claimed similar motivation, not one student indicated a decrease in motivation from previous English classes. The results of this survey conclude that compared to previous English classes, student motivation stays the same, increases, or greatly increases in this game-based class. In terms of student-identified motivation, no downsides to creating a game-based class are evident in this particular group of students, and over three-fourths of students indicate an increase in motivation.

“I am more motivated in this English class than any other English class I have had. I love 3D Game Lab because it makes me feel like I am in my favorite book called ​ . I feel like I am Art3mis. I hope more English teachers find out about this site. I would be more successful in English.”

Takeaway #2: Game-based features influence student motivation to do work.

In a writing class, practice is key; students get better at writing by writing. They need to write broadly and deeply, write with purpose, and write often. Motivation to practice the craft of writing is important. When students lack motivation to write--whether they are frustrated by the process or don’t understand the purpose--they tend to write less and less often. To build writing skills, students must be motivated to do the work of writing. Game-based features such as a leaderboard, game-winning goal, weekly levels, XP (experience points), badges/awards, and choice of quests encourage students to continue writing even when it would be easier to give up.

“The whole class is a game and I like that because it makes me want to do my work more often.”

“It’s a very addicting way to learn because you just want to keep learning and learning.”

In the end-of-the-trimester survey, students rated specific game-based features as extremely motivating, very motivating, motivating, or not motivating with respect to encouraging them to keep writing.

Students rated each game-based feature separately based on how motivating that feature was to them in their work in The Game. The ranks “extremely motivating” and “very motivating” capture over 60% of student ratings in every category, with results over 75% for XP and the Game-Winning Goal. The rank “not motivating” captures less than 15% of student ratings in all categories, with no students indicating that the Game-Winning Goal was not a motivating factor.

“The Scoreboard was the most motivating to me because I love competition but I kind of slacked a little bit once I was a game winner. I know if I push myself a little bit farther next trimester, I will win the game first.”

After rating each game-based feature separately, students were asked to identify the one feature most motivating to them in their work in The Game. Overwhelmingly, the Game-Winning Goal and the Leaderboard/Competition were considered most motivating by the greatest number of students (28% each) with XP following closely behind (22%).

“The Game-winning Goal [was most motivating] because it helped me do lots of quests and by doing those quests it helped me on my writing.”

“Be the top leader, the first person to win the game because then everyone would be talking about who won the game and you show all the people how you can do in school.”

“I honestly think this way of learning is much better easier and more fun to do. You learn a whole lot more ...I think every teacher should do this method. It’s really easy and for kids that feel too lazy this is like a competition and it makes that student want to compete to see who has more quest points.”

“What motivates me in this class is ‘beating the game.’ I'm not really a competitive person but it's fun for me to see how many people I have to try and pass.”

Although choice of quests and pacing were identified by only 15% of students as the most important feature, student interviews revealed that for those students, having the power to choose their own quests and work at their own pace was critical; without this feature, over half of those students indicated that they would not have done the work required to pass the class.

“A few years back I really never cared for English class or anything.

But this year it’s different. I can go at my own pace and I can do different things. I don't like classes where everyone does the same exact thing. So this class helped me a whole lot just by letting me do what I wanted and I was at MY OWN pace not the teacher’s pace.” “ I get to choose what I want my teacher to grade. I’m able to choose my activities. I feel like in this class I’m going to be able to learn more than in my other classes.” “...Most of all I really like the fact that I can choose which quests I want and there are no due dates. It makes me feel less pressured and motivates me to get my work done.”

Interestingly, badges--the feature that sparked the creation of The Game in the first place--was indicated by the fewest students as most motivating (7%) although over 70% of students found badges to be very or extremely motivating. Since badges are awarded as a result of completing a series of smaller quests, badges take more time, are earned less frequently, and are viewed by students as something special.

“The badges/awards was the most [motivating] because when I got a badge it made me feel good.”

“I think the thing that motivates me in this game-based class is that it’s fun to earn badges.”

Most Important Feature for Student Motivation Game-Based Feature

% Students

Game-Winning Goal

28%

Leaderboard/ Competition

28%

XP (Experience Points)

22%

Choice of Quests/ Pace

15%

Badges/ Awards

7%

When these students who have struggled in traditionally-organized classes--where percentage or letter grades are used to motivate learning--experience a learning environment supported by game-based features, their motivation to complete work and practice more writing increases.

Takeaway #3: Many students worked harder than they otherwise would have.

In an attempt to give students many choices of quests, I created over twice as many quests as a student would need to actually win (or pass) the class. In addition to choice, I knew from my research that some students would continue working on quests even after they had won simply because there were more experience points available. Intrinsic motivation pushes students to stay at the top of the leaderboard, earn more XP, beat a friend/classmate, or just keep growing because they are proud of their accomplishments.

“This class made it more fun and more encouraging. In this class I actually felt to try my best. In my other classes all I felt is do enough to pass.”

“What motivates me is to graduate high school. But the game pushes me to do more than I should.”

For first trimester language lab, students needed 3500XP to win the game and get an A in the class. All but seven students reached the 3500 XP goal by the end of the trimester; of those seven, four students were within 500 XP and all seven students achieved at least 61% of the 3500 XP goal. Having a points goal to reach rather than an overall percentage goal allowed students to control their own grades as well as see their progress measured in the progress bar as they completed quests towards their goal. Compared to the 29 students who received a D or F in their 8th grade English class, having only seven students not achieve an A was a marked improvement.

Even more interestingly, on the other end of the XP spectrum, 26 students (over ⅓ of the class) had 4000XP or more ,which is 14% more work than winning required. These students chose to continue working on quests for XP even after they had won the game and finished the work required for their final exam. Even more impressive, six students reached the Uber Win stretch goal of 5000XP, which is 42% more work than winning required.

This stretch goal was established at the beginning of the trimester as the ultimate goal for the class. Anyone who reached this stretch goal got their name in a drawing for $50, so there was a financial extrinsic motivator. Still, in order to reach the goal, students had to do so much more than the required work of 3500 XP that intrinsic motivation had to be a significant factor. In fact, the top three students in the class had more than 600 XP ​over the Uber Win goal and the top student had 6130 XP. She ended up doing 75% more work than was required to get an A for the class.

“My experience points and the scoreboard are a big part of what keeps me going. The more experience points I have, the more I want to keep going. If someone is ahead of me in the scoreboard, I look and see how many experience points they have. If they are fifteen points away, I try to get thirty points to beat them.”

“In this class getting up to the top and having the highest score is pretty amazing and I know how it feels to be number one, and I don't want to lose that, so i work hard to be number one. Sometimes I drop down to 2nd or 3rd place but that is what makes me work harder. Some people are like’ this is just a game’ and I’m like ‘not for me!’”

Takeaway #4: Progress and growth mindset

Weekly levels and leveling up in rank are two ways that students visualize small goals that lead to the bigger game-winning goal. These smaller goals show students their progress, a continually forward progress, toward the final goal. This system differs from a traditionally-graded classroom where the first percentage grade given is averaged with each additional grade. Student scores go up and down based on each individual assignment. If you start with 100%, you have nowhere to go but down.

One key difference is how negatively zeroes or low scores for assignments not turned in or completed well affect overall grades. In a percentage-based grading system, students can have 99%--an A--in class, miss one big assignment (or turn it in late for half credit) and drop to a C without any hope of getting back to that initial grade of 99%. In a mastery-graded class, however, there are no percentage points to average and students’ points will never go down. If they miss a 100XP assignment, they don’t get a zero averaged into their grade, they just don’t get any points towards their goal. Those 100XP can be gained through other quests, maybe 5 quests worth 20XP each.

Mandatory quests are few, but for those quests that must be done, mastery of the quest is the only assessment factor. The only mandatory quest for Language Lab is a personal narrative that had been taken through the writing process. The process pieces such as brainstorming, first draft, workshop, and peer editing each have their own quests that lead students toward the final draft.

The final draft of their personal narratives is mandatory--that is, it must be done, and done satisfactorily--to receive an overall grade for the class, regardless of how much XP a student has earned.

Since this narrative is assessed using a mastery scale, students must rewrite their narratives until they have a 2.5 on a 4 point writing rubric. If they do not achieve 2.5 on the first submission, I work with them, they go back to peer reviews, and they have as many attempts as needed to achieve mastery. Everyone who got an A for Language Lab had at least a 2.5 on the 4 point rubric, no exceptions. Narratives that did not meet those requirements were returned. That means that no one had the option of turning in subpar work and just letting it bring their percentage grade down. Mastery learning promotes high student achievement as well as a growth mindset.

We have continual conversations about how student work can be even better, how every quest shows that they’ve grown and expanded their writing repertoire, and that both the weekly goals and the game-winning goal help them grow as writers.

“What motivates me is if I’m doing a good job or not. I like how the game tells me how I’m doing or how many points I have and how I can get my points up. Knowing I’m doing something for a reason really motivates me too.”

“I didn’t think I could do it but I started with a little quest and I could do that and then I did more little quests and then a big one. Then we pick our best ones and paste it in [year-long progress journals] and you look back [at the end of the year] and you’re a writer.”

In 3DGameLab, every increase in XP is measured by two progress bars at the top of student dashboards. The group bar measures total progress toward the game-winning goal and the rank bar measures progress towards leveling up to the next rank, or achieving the weekly goal. A progress bar is a key factor in developing and encouraging growth mindset.

Many students that begin Language Lab do not view themselves as writers; in fact, many believe that you are either good at writing or you’re not, and that there just is not much you can do if you are not. They have internalized this either/or dichotomy for being a writer, this fixed mindset with regards to writing. With progress bars, they can visualize each step of their progress and see their growth, eliminating the excuses associated with a fixed, non-writer mindset.By the end of the year, almost all students began to see themselves as in-progress writers.

Takeaway #5: Failures/mistakes become an acceptable step in learning With 37% of the cohort receiving Ds or Fs in their previous year’s English class, academic failure was a part of many of these students’ lives. In asking students to reflect about their attitudes regarding academic failures, the issue of control emerged as a key ingredient regarding students’ attitudes about failing a class. For students who failed and weren’t very concerned about it, they expressed a lack of control as a big issue. Teachers had all of the control: when things were due, how much to write, what topics to write about or tasks to complete, and ultimately what grade students would get.

Academic failures combine with students’ lack of efficacy or control over the end result of their grades. For some of these students who failed previous English classes, lack of motivation to complete tasks resulted from disinterest in topics and feeling as if they had no control. One student claimed that he never had enough time to finish work at home because of sports. One student commented that even if she did the work, she wouldn’t get better than a C or D so why bother. Several other students saw no reason to work hard to pass the class when they would move on to high school anyway. These students hated the idea of failing, but they felt it was inevitable so they accepted it and stopped trying.

A second, smaller group of students worked exceptionally hard to get the best grades they could.

The very idea of failure was terrifying. Theses students cited parent expectations, personal goals, and fear of not being good enough as their reasons for working hard. After turning in a big paper, they would worry about the grade until the paper was returned and they were either relieved or disappointed--but never proud of their work. They admit that learning was secondary to the grade they received and as long as they got a good grade, they didn’t care about learning.

Consequently, they tended to underperform on finals and start from scratch at the beginning of each school year.

When these students are immersed in mastery learning, a shift in thinking about grades happens.

Students control which quests they complete and how much XP they earn every day. Without due dates, they control the time necessary to complete quests well, which helps slower processors or writers in particular. They choose which quests to work on and so they control what types of quests they do each day. Finally, mastery-based assessment allowed students to control their progress in the class. They would never get a fraction of the XP for a quest; either they would get all of the XP or the quest would be returned with directions on how to reach mastery and have the quest accepted.

Returned quests are a necessary component to mastery learning; if the quest does not meet the mastery learning standards, it cannot be accepted until it does. At first, concern that students would shut down or give up if quests were returned was a major concern. However, the evidence quickly showed that students overwhelmingly prefer to have quests returned with instructions for fixing them than arbitrarily (to them) receiving a poor grade.

“I like how we don’t lose the points and are able to make them up and get full points for the assignment or project. Usually teachers give you half credit and half of the time. That’s why I really like this class because I never feel rushed at all.”

“When I get a quest sent back I know that I must find out what I did wrong and correct it all to get it accepted. In my other classes they won't let us find out what we did wrong so we can change it so I love how we can figure out our mistakes and still get a very good grade on it.”

Overall, students prefer the opportunity to make mistakes and fix them without consequences.

The phrase “second chance” came up often in this reflection. Even when students were frustrated, they appreciated the honesty of being held to standards and ability to correct mistakes

or try again. Of the 74 students who finished this reflection on returned quests, two indicated a neutral reaction towards having quests returned; 9 exhibited frustration but overall acceptance--in over half of those, the frustration was self-directed; and an overwhelming 63 unreservedly approved of returning quests if they didn’t meet the standards of acceptance.

“I actually like when you return quests I didn't do right or that I need to improve on. You're basically giving me a second chance. We all like second chances and it's a great way to learn from our mistakes. Most teachers will grade the work and if it's wrong it's wrong, they don't confront you about your mistakes and if you made a mistake you made it there's no going back. So thank you for returning quests I had to redo.”

“Well I like the info you give me. It makes me a better writer and comprehender.

Because if you just let me get away with writing like that, I will never learn how to write better. I prefer you give me feedback and returning my quests than to just get away with it and not learn nothing.”

Students want to be held to high academic standards. They want to know that they are progressing steadily forward and that success can be messy. When immersed in an environment where failure has no lasting consequences, where not meeting expectations results in opportunities to try again without punishment, students accept feedback and criticism with thanks and the belief that they will grow from having their work returned to them for improvement. Additionally, students find motivation from knowing that their work is important enough to be assessed and weighed for mastery and that failure is really just a step towards growth and learning.

“My motivation in this class is really awesome...we get to know if we are doing something wrong because our teacher could always send them [quests] back if we did something wrong so we could learn from our mistakes.”

Conclusions and Anticipated Action

Reframing educational experiences is one key to engaging reluctant students. From their previous experiences, students know that they don’t do well on homework or assignments, so I start off the year by saying my class has neither. That grabs their attention. I tell them they can’t pass my class...but they can win it. They are intrigued. No tests, no essays, no due dates so no late work...and they are mine.

Then when I say they get to earn XP, level up, compete on the leaderboard, and strive for a game-winning goal, they can’t wait to get started. My biggest piece of evidence for the power of reframing educational experiences is this: after giving my reframing speech and introducing them to The Game, I asked what the best part of this class was going to be. Overwhelmingly, they responded, “no homework.” The biggest question I was asked in the next week: “Can we play The Game at home?”

The success of game-based learning is due--at least in part--to the reframing of educational experiences. By anticipating what tasks students typically respond negatively towards and reframing those tasks as more positive experiences, student motivation to complete those tasks increases. Game-based features such as leaderboards, level-ups, and XP are also motivating as students shift their mindsets about class from a fixed capacity to a growth mindset, an inherent aspect of gaming.

Student choice also impacts student motivation. Whether student choice involves which quests to attempt or resubmit after being returned, when or how to do quests, or what strategies students use to win the game, choice empowers students and leads to a greater sense of efficacy. When students believe that the power to win rests entirely in their hands, they step up and work. With game-based features at the core, students also choose how competitive to be by looking at--or choosing not to look at--the leaderboard as an indicator. The choice of how far to quest and when to be satisfied is also in the hands of the students. I only direct students when they are behind on weekly level-ups; otherwise, they direct themselves. If a student wins in Week 9, he can choose to kick back for the next three weeks. Hard work pays exactly what students want it to: bonus level-ups or freetime without hassles. That is a student choice.

Finally, games encourage failures and mistakes as necessary parts of the learning experience. In fact, when gaming, if there is no chance to fail, the game loses value as too easy. Failures in games are learning experiences, forcing participants to dig deeper into what they were attempting to do, strategize better methods for success, and find, assess, and try multiple solutions. Most importantly, failures in games have ​no lasting impact on overall success. Success levels you up; failure ​does not level you down. When measures of academic success support failures as vital parts of the learning process, students take more academic risks and put their focus on learning.

References Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1990). ​Flow: The psychology of optimal experience. New York:Harper & Row. Dweck, Carol S. (2008) ​Mindset :the new psychology of success. New York : Ballantine Books.

McGonigal, J. (2011). ​Reality is broken: Why games make us better and how they can change the world. New York: Penguin Press.

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