One of the most interesting changes that technological advances could bring into the classroom is gamification, an educational approach to integrate game elements and allow students to become active participant in the lessons. The goal of this method is to maximize engagement, create motivation and make space for self-developmental skills that would never be built fully from didactic pedagocial methods.

Effective games are typically characterized by a series of goals or progressions, several challenges and obstacles, rewards and bonuses, set of rules, clear storyline with characters and high interactivity. Puzzles and challenges can frequently involve team working and collaboration, critical thinking and problem solving rather than just testing long-term memory. Through games, higher-order thinking skills are often required and able to turn simple boring tasks into something that students would compete to be immersed in.

One particular feature of gamification in the process of changing the balance of agency is that it enables active and independently avid learners, which can hardly be observed in didactic method of teaching. Through games, students seek to absorb and acquire knowledge better in order to complete tasks and overcome obstacles, which will then turn into rewards and a sense of satisfaction and proud. Memorized knowledge is also subtly tested, as requested by our teachers in transition to new high-tech era, but it is not the main focus and will not ruin students’ learning experience. However said, it depends on each gamified model to decide the level of knowledge representations (or “artefacts”) to be produced. In other words, not all students participating in gamification can be effective and autonomous knowledge producers and writers.

With that being said, there are still flaws to this educational appoach. Not all learning can be gamified and teachers have to strike balance between this way of learning with other methods to ensure effective lessons. Gamification can be a nuisance for classroom management as students often have burst of emotions when losing or winning a game. It would be such a huge deal to drag students’ attention back to papers and pens if gamification becomes a habit in class. Limited time for each lesson could also be a reason why some teachers try to avoid this technique upon attempting to catch up with weekly lesson objects and school syllabi. More information about this technique can be found in this interesting research https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0360131513000031.

Examples of gamified activities are Kahoot, Doulingo and Quizziz. These gamified educational platforms are teacher-friendly, appealing and rewarding for some tries, especially when traditional activities become too predictable that learners often lose focus and get distracted in classroom context.