191 – Gamification of Education

[00:00:07] Santiago: Hi, and welcome to the IDEMS podcast. I’m Santiago Borio, an Impact Activation Fellow finally, and I am here with David Stern, one of the founding directors of IDEMS. Hi David.

[00:00:19] David: Hi Santiago. Welcome back. This is a nice episode to welcome you back.

[00:00:25] Santiago: Indeed it is. I’ve been meaning to discuss this with you for quite some time because I know it’s something you’re quite passionate about, which is the idea of gamification in education.

[00:00:40] David: Yeah. This is an interesting topic.

[00:00:42] Santiago: I know you love games in general, and I know that in maths camps and in all sorts of contexts we use games for educational purposes, for educational value. But the idea of gamification of education goes much beyond that and there’s plenty of examples of people who have done initiatives to gameify aspects of education.

There’s a very well known website, Kahoot, that allows you to create quizzes and competitions and I’ve used it a lot in the classroom and it’s really good fun, it gets the kids very engaged. There’s a chap in Argentina, history teacher, who created a platform as well, where there’s some sort of transactional element where if students are engaged, work well with the games that he designs for educational purposes, they get even financial rewards of some kind. And I believe we have an example similar to that, closer to our work from one of our colleagues, where they created a sort of smiley coin is called?

[00:02:06] David: This is TutorWeb and the SmileyCoin.

[00:02:09] Santiago: Do you want to tell the audience about the SmileyCoins?

[00:02:12] David: This is a colleague from Iceland. They created a cryptocurrency called SmileyCoins, and they’ve used this now as a way of incentivising maths homework through their TutorWeb system. And they’ve had these wonderful instances where this has been introduced through libraries and schools in Kenya. And through this, students have been able to buy things at the local library shop or even buy the tablet on which they were studying, and all sorts of other very interesting cases. And it’s worked extremely well.

There were questions about its scalability. I was recently in Ethiopia and we discussed with our colleague in Ethiopia who are also part of this same project, there are questions about scalability of these things, but there’s no doubt that they have been impactful and in small cases they’ve led to increased learning and they’ve helped in low resource environments in very interesting ways.

I don’t see that so much necessarily as gamification. It is a form of gamification, I suppose, but it’s not really what comes to mind to me when I think about gamification of education.

[00:03:34] Santiago: So what do you think?

[00:03:35] David: When I think about gamification, the example I love is the one where there was this study which took a really high production game, I think it was a SimCity of some form or a variant of that, and they made an educational version related to a specific course in environmental science, which they then used to get the student grades.

The ideas about how you look after the environment were deeply embedded in the scoring mechanisms of the game. And playing the game well and succeeding at the game demonstrated your learning. Now, that’s real gamification for me. That’s future looking in terms of why don’t we think about our education having a similar production value to our entertainment.

Gaming is a huge entertainment industry now. If we put in a similar production value to our education as goes into big games, we could achieve incredible outcomes. And that’s something where those outcomes could be really relevant, you could actually be having games which are not so dissimilar from the workplace.

If you think about the F1, F1 simulators are very similar to F1 driving in different ways. That’s an extreme case, but these simulators versus actual reality for running a business, for other things, blurring that line between the education towards jobs and the gaming where that line was more blurred. I think there could be some really interesting opportunities there, which aren’t fully explored. And there are people interested in this, but there could be much more work happening there.

[00:05:27] Santiago: I heard there was a big project with Minecraft as well, to get similar educational gaming experiences. But what I’m hearing from you would potentially also require a big curriculum review as well, wouldn’t it?

[00:05:47] David: Well, it is more than just a curriculum review. This is the thing. If you did this properly, it could be totally transformative for what education is. What is the role of education?

Now, there’s all sorts of problems on this. How much time do you want kids to be putting in front of a screen? If they’re already in front of a screen for education and they’re in front of the screen for entertainment, that’s probably too much. We actually want education to be offline. Not all games need to be digital games.

With the maths camps, most of the games that we expose people to, in fact, almost all of the gaming part is all about sort of human interactions. It’s card games, it’s puzzle games, it’s problem games. It’s not just about games, which are, if you want, realistic and could be educational in terms of a workplace, but also stimulating your thinking, your reasoning skills, the sort of skills that maths training gives you.

A lot of this can be learned and enhanced through games. Concentration skills in young kids, with my own kids playing games with them, a lot of this is about actually helping them to concentrate, to focus, to be interested in the game and to actually give it their attention.

[00:07:07] Santiago: So it is a lot more about skill or competency development.

[00:07:14] David: Well, I certainly believe that games are great for skill development and competency development. But the nature of the game does matter. Should we be thinking about collaborative or cooperative games, what is the value in competitive games?

You know, learning how to lose in a game is actually a very valuable skill in its own right. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose. This is very useful as part of a childhood development process. Being able to also understand where luck comes into things, the nature of randomness and how some things, people confuse skill with luck on occasions where sometimes they think it’s just chance that they win or lose where there’s skill behind it, and other times people think they’re very skillful, whereas it’s just luck.

Snakes and Ladders is a wonderful example of a game which is just luck. And that’s still a good game to play with kids and it’s an educational game to help them to concentrate, to help them to understand the nature of chance and so on, and that’s why it was designed. It’s a very old game. Old games, new games, these are all potentially pedagogically useful. That doesn’t mean that they’re all good in all contexts for all people.

[00:08:34] Santiago: Of course, of course. It comes back as always to Options by Context, one of our principles.

[00:08:41] David: Yeah.

[00:08:42] Santiago: Now, one of the biggest concerns that I heard about games in education is, and let me be clear here, my knowledge of biology is minimal, but playing games can generate release of dopamine and there are consequences attached to that in terms of, you know, if you are releasing dopamine for a period of time, then it’s harder potentially to concentrate on other things. And that release of dopamine, from what I’ve heard, can then mean that students are less able to concentrate on other things that are not gamified.

[00:09:30] David: I’m not an expert biologist either, but broadly what you’re saying is that, you know, dopamine is sort of released when you are in this state of enjoyment and engagement. And when you are then in context which are less engaging, you don’t get that same release in the same way. And therefore, you expect that now.

This is an argument, which seems plausible in the sense that, yes, maybe it is better, if you have a class with lots of students and few teachers and you need to keep them all control, yeah, let’s make sure that there’s no stimulus. That is an argument for a sort of controllable situation. But is it the best form of education we can give our kids?

So if we don’t give them stimulation, which actually engages them, then maybe they are able to be controlled better. It seems like, to me, a slightly strange argument that we are trying to sort of say that we shouldn’t be having natural stimulation within the school day because, you know, it’s better that they gets their hits of dopamine from watching YouTube videos or other forms of stimulation. Is that what we’re really saying?

[00:10:41] Santiago: No, the interview I watched with some, I believe, specialists was saying that it was the bursts of dopamine that are generated through the success in a game, say, it’s the way dopamine is released rather than the enjoyment and so on. It is that the games, or some games perhaps…

[00:11:13] David: Absolutely, to say that all games are good in all school contexts would be naive and silly. But to say that games shouldn’t be used because they create these sorts of stimulus, which are a positive, that doesn’t make sense to me, to me that just sounds like bad science. That’s somebody who’s got an opinion and they’re trying to give a scientific process to justify their opinion.

Now, let me check, to be clear here, what I’m not saying is that all games and all game types are good in all contexts. I’ve never tried to say that. But to try and equate games with any form of extreme scenario, you know, I mean this is sort of gambling, arguably, and this has been there for a long time, gambling is something which should be avoided in a school context. Gambling does lead to these great highs as you win, and releases of dopamine and so on. It also is something where it can lead to an addiction, and there are issues around that.

So I’m not trying to say that we shouldn’t be careful about what type of games and how this is introduced and what we are actually teaching our kids through the games. Teaching kids about gambling and getting them hooked on the sort of games of chance, maybe that’s not the right games. But that’s not games, that’s particular games in particular contexts. And this is where understanding the roles different games can play and the educational value of different games is so important as opposed to just saying games are good or games are bad.

[00:13:01] Santiago: Yeah. Yeah. So, getting concrete from what you’re saying, there is, this is one of my favourite games, it’s actually called The Game, i’m not sure if you’re familiar with it, where you have one card for each number from 2 to 99, and you have two ones and two hundreds that are on the table to begin with. And the ones from a hundred, you need to go down by playing card, and the one starting from one, you have to go up.

That game itself is a collaborative game that you can play in small groups, and in terms of understanding of order and magnitude of numbers, I can see so many benefits and how it can apply directly to the curriculum. So that is I think what you’re suggesting as sensible game that could be implemented in an educational context specifically for numeracy or understanding size of numbers and so on.

[00:14:19] David: And this is I think where it is important to distinguish between different types of game. Understanding, for example, games like that, which are sort of strategic games, they’re collaborative games, and the value they bring. Understanding games which you’re more likely to find in a casino, games of chance, which may have a place in the classroom, but in what context and how would you do that, what are you actually bringing in?

These are all different questions, which I don’t have the answers to, but what I do believe is that anything which just takes gaming and says, ah, no, we shouldn’t do that because, well, you know, which games are you looking at? What role are they playing in the classroom? How are they being used? How are they adding value?

I’ve seen so much gamification, which I just find horrific and I find terrible, where the actual nature of that gamification in a classroom setting to me is detracting value from the content, it’s sort of masking it. So I don’t believe that all gamification is valuable, but I do believe that as a pedagogical tool there are elements of games which are extremely valuable to be able to learn all sorts of different things and to be able to engage students in learning.

[00:15:44] Santiago: Yes, certainly engagement is an issue, specifically in schools. As our listeners will know, I just spent a while in a secondary school, engagement is a big challenge, and I mean, if there’s sensible techniques to help get students engaged, why not try them? I mentioned Kahoot. Kahoot has worked wonderfully for me in many contexts, but in other contexts, it’s led to complete over excitement and choosing answers at random just to win by being the first to answer, because if you are the first to answer correctly, it’s worth a lot more points than if you’re the last.

[00:16:34] David: Yeah.

[00:16:34] Santiago: I suppose balance is key here as well.

[00:16:40] David: I guess what you mean by balance is that as with anything, it’s about not encouraging the extremes. Even that is not so clear. I mean, I learned a lot when I was very young by actually being extremely immersed in games for hours on end. And I got a lot out of that, you know, strategy games, Civilization is one which I remember right from the beginning and there I knew variants and versions of these out.

Should you allow kids to just get lost in some of these game worlds? Does that add value? I can see context within which it does. Can you take it too far? Absolutely. There’s so much to discuss on this. There’s careers made now, you know, with e-gaming and eSports, and actually the competitions that come. Is that a healthy development? I don’t know.

[00:17:30] Santiago: And there’s careers as well in game development, there is an actual degree that you can do here in Argentina on game development, and that doesn’t necessarily imply computer games, it’s any type of game development. There are modules that are on physical games, analog games.

[00:17:52] David: Yeah. This is a huge, huge industry. As societies, one of the things that we as societies desire is leisure time. Well, one of the most common things to do in leisure time is play games. It’s not necessarily in all societies. It’s interesting that actually this is something which changes from one culture to another about, are games seen positively? Are they forms of leisure? Are they forms of education?

[00:18:23] Santiago: Well, we did hit a small barrier originally with maths camps when we tried to introduce card games from the very beginning. In Kenya, it was seen as a very negative thing to do. And we still get feedback from teachers saying cards are often banned in schools because of the relation to gambling, but there’s so much to be learned from playing sensible card games.

[00:18:48] David: Absolutely and that balance between those two, you know, forget about digital games for a second, but just take a pack of cards, is a pack of cards a good pedagogical educational tool or is it something which distracts and creates cultures which are undesirable within your communities. You know, in different contexts, that same pack can be seen very positively, very negatively.

And it’s not that one is right and the other is wrong. The tool itself, the game, is a lot about how it is seen, what it is used for, what types of games you play with it? With a pack of cards you can play games of incredible skill or you can play games of total chance.

I’m not saying one is necessarily even better than the other. You can play games of speed, you can play games, which are really thought provoking, requiring memory, you know, almost chess like. There’s such a variety of games that you can play with a single deck of cards.

[00:19:50] Santiago: Yes, indeed. There is one game that comes to mind that was developed, I believe, by a team in MIT, which is a game of pure skill, is one of the very few, if not the only game, card game that is a hundred percent skill. And that requires, as you said, chess like memory. You need to remember what cards were played and when.

[00:20:17] David: Let me just describe that game very briefly, because it didn’t get the attention it deserved. But the point was that you have a deck of cards, well, you can then give each player a suit, so everybody knows what cards the other players have. So there’s no luck involved in which cards you have. Everybody’s got the same cards. What happens is how you play the cards you have. These are interesting games of skill. It’s not just skill because if you play really well, you will always win.

This is also what’s interesting. That skill is also about understanding the people. It’s all about the humans. It’s about understanding that that game is not about the cards, it’s about who you are playing as much as it is about the actual physical cards, ’cause you know what everyone’s got. If there was a single strategy that was always the best you could learn it, but it’s not, there isn’t.

It’s all about understanding, well, if other people play in certain ways, then this strategy might be better than that strategy. How well do you know the people you are playing with and against? That’s an interesting concept. These are all games which sort of teach different types of skill and they all come from a deck of cards. I’m not necessarily saying that everybody should fall in love with decks of cards, there’s also a number of contexts in which they have got correctly negative connotations.

[00:21:42] Santiago: Oh yes, one of the most popular games, card games in Argentina is a game where dishonesty is the best strategy. And I’m not sure I would want that in an educational context.

[00:21:56] David: Well, what are you trying to teach? This is what it comes back to. The game is a tool, how we think about education and the role of games in education rather than just gamifying education, the interaction between games and education is such an interesting topic.

[00:22:13] Santiago: It is. And I feel that we discussed more the relationship between games and education. But we didn’t get too much into what education could look like if it is more gamified. And I believe you have some…

[00:22:34] David: A dream on this. What if your school education looked more like a driving test?

[00:22:43] Santiago: Okay.

[00:22:44] David: So you could be examined on it anytime you want. There’s actually interesting research about this. You know, high pressure exams, which is what almost all education system lead to, your end of school exams are high pressure examination situations. There’s a gender bias in this. It’s been sort of shown that boys do tend to perform better under that context on average. It’s not that boys would perform better in the end of school exams, it’s that high pressure exams tend to suit boys more than girls, there is some research on that.

But it’s not clear that that’s actually what we want. Do we want education systems which are measured based on high pressure moments in time to check you can perform at a particular moment in time? Or do we want things which are, you know, encouraging competency?

There’s this whole move to competency-based education happening around the world. But if you really look at competencies, then the heart of competency-based education has to be the assessment systems and how you actually judge the assessments. And I come back to the fact that, especially with AI pushing us to have less and less coursework in examination systems because of the ability of students to simply use AI to do their homework, so to speak, that’s pushing people back to these high pressure exam situations.

What if we had these more gamified processes? What if we actually had real gamification where there aren’t substitutes to sort of going through and playing the game, so to speak, and actually thinking about this. Now, of course, there was, I think this wonderful case with Elon Musk about this where he was found to be paying someone to play games for him so that his characters would be better.

So of course, if you have the money, you could always get people to do something for you in whatever way. But the idea that, you know, your education is much more about what you are able to do, the skills you gain in a particular direction, this is something where, let’s say, running a particular business, which is sort of one which can be relatively well simulated, what about actually training people how to do it by getting them to play in the simulators and actually once they’ve got the skills to do the bookkeeping?

I mean, bookkeeping is such an obvious thing. You do this in games all the time. What if we actually use proper bookkeeping tools in games, learning how to do this and do this well and having consequences in the game. And that’s actually taking you through and you think through how to be a good manager, how to react in different contexts as part of a management course. Well, that would be a wonderful thing to gamify.

These could be games people actually want to play. And if you get good at doing this in a way where the actual game is designed to get the management skills and the processes we want instilled in good managers, then you know, that is a good training. You know they’ve been exposed to these things. You can see what they scored points on, you know, what awards they’ve got within the game. That could build up your CV.

Amazing as a different way of thinking about assessment, a different way of thinking about how we think about education, what we actually value in education. And these things are technically possible, but they are really, really far from what I believe we actually have at this point in time.

[00:26:34] Santiago: And they require systemic change, which is another of our principles.

[00:26:38] David: Yeah, looking at systems and thinking about how systems work, and what it is that we want, I think there are specific cases where this could be taken up and done. The key thing would be we need to be investing similar amounts into games which serve educational purposes as games which serve entertainment. And that’s hard because it’s expensive. But it’s something where it’s not impossible to imagine. Anyway.

[00:27:13] Santiago: Any final thoughts?

[00:27:14] David: No, it’s been fun to discuss and thank you for bringing this topic up. It’s a topic I do enjoy thinking of, and I’d love to actually work on it, but it’s way away from our current wheelhouse, so to speak.

[00:27:27] Santiago: Yes. Maybe one day we could have an episode where you describe your real, your proper dream on this systemic change in education, including games, but that’s a discussion for another day.

[00:27:43] David: Well, actually, there are other parts of this, as you say, that’s a whole nother episode. And the other episodes we could actually do is, well, you know, concretely, if we are looking at small steps, what do we believe? And I think we’ve already had a few episodes around STACK and the importance of feedback and mastery.

In some ways these are small elements of gamification within the current systems which are known to be effective and where there’s growing evidence that you don’t need to have the big dream to actually improve within the current systems or create change within the current systems.

So maybe we should have another one where we reign things back in as well, and we actually get more concrete and what are the things which can be done now?

[00:28:24] Santiago: Okay. That sounds exciting. Well, thank you very much, David.

[00:28:27] David: Thanks.