Student Engagement: Lessons from Gamification

Rick Raymer's article on Gamification has got me reflecting.  As a teacher, it really gladdens my heart when a student says "I enjoyed doing this assignment".  For this to happen, students should be completely engaged in the assignment and find it a rewarding experience.  In this case, Grades are only an outcome; the true reward is the process of doing the assignment itself. 

Alas, a complement like this is not commonplace, particularly with elearning assignments.  Students are usually intimidated and stressed by a requirement to use technology.   "Why do I need to produce a digital poster?  Can't I just use a paperboard?'',   "Why do I need to use google docs, I will email the document to my partner and he can edit it".  I could go on.

Considering that I do set goals and objectives, provide feedback, encourage incremental learning of new skills and scaffold skills through the assessment, I found the concepts of peer motivation, rewarding of effort and presenting an elevator pitch of the e-learning assessment very interesting.

Peer motivation can be a great tool in getting the reluctant students to engage better.  Identifying a few technology champions and using them to showcase their enthusiasm, help and motivate peers would help to increase engagement in general. I would like to try to use more of this in my assignments.

Rewarding the effort and not the success is a good idea.  I find that students are more likely to experiment with technology and buy into e-learning if they don't have to create a perfect product.  Informal evaluation and feedback to students during the project helps to improve the quality of their product and builds their confidence and engagement.  From a student's perspective, receiving feedback and improving their project, helps to create a feeling of ownership and pride, increasing engagement. Doing this takes up a lot of time for a teacher but the efforts are worth it.  Digital tools naturally help with this task, with their ability to allow for comments, feedbacks and posts.

Elevator pitch of an e-learning assignment - This I must confess, I have never tried.  All my assessments begin with a set of detailed requirements with milestones and deliverables - very linear.  This can be a bit daunting to some students.  So perhaps a two minute pitch with a simple demo of the product and processes would help to market the assignment.  A new concept - selling an assignment to student, but perhaps that is the trend with digital citizens.  I'm certainly willing to give this one a try.