Many student’s experience lots of pressure in school and as a result, it often inhibits their growth in learning. So many researchers have began researching new ways of teaching and educating that are more effective that the current traditional teaching methods. The Amparo Galbis-CĂłrdoba, JosĂ© MartĂ-Parreño and Rafael Currás-PĂ©rez’s article states that educational gamification is a developmental approach that increases learner motivation and engagement by incorporating game design elements into educational environments. Gamification can also reduce stress for students and make them enjoy learning.
Due to the COVID-19 global pandemic, many courses have opted for online delivery of instruction as traditional teaching methods do not work amidst a pandemic, however, gamification can be a good substitute for traditional education. Teachers can put students into groups and let them complete a group project in small groups. Groups can conduct online meetings and using gamification education, to create competition amongst the groups to present their best project at the end of the semester. This way, students are motivated to do the best they can while also learning during a global pandemic.
From my own learning experience, when I was studying commerce, my teacher used gamification as a method to create study groups for us to submit a company business report at the end of the semester, and let us do an online presentation. When each group finished presenting, the teacher would ask the students to think like an “investor”, and to vote for which one you would invest in. The projects were then graded according to the number of votes for the projects where the more votes a project had, the better grade it received. Each of the students in their group strived for their group to achieve first place, so they were motivated to study and work hard during the group project period. I learned lots of things about this course during do the group project. After I finished this course, I really enjoyed it and liked the teachers use of gamification to educate us. Hence, I believe that gamification is more powerful and acceptable than the traditional teaching in education.
References:
Galbis-CĂłrdoba, A., MartĂ-Parreño, J. & Currás-PĂ©rez, R. (2017). Education Students’ Attitude towards the Use of Gamification for Competencies Development. Journal of e-Learning and Knowledge Society, 13
(1),. Italian e-Learning Association. Retrieved May 24, 2022 from https://www.learntechlib.org/p/188128/.
— The Power of Gamification in Education | Scott Hebert | TEDxUAlberta
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mOssYTimQwM
