‘’Education is what remains after one has forgotten what one has learned in school’ – Albert Einstein-

An interesting quote, that has quite a bit of truth in it, I believe.. In my opinion, school should prepare a student for life in it’s broadest sense. Teach kids how to work be successful in life and provide them with the tools that are required for that.

Tools like: working in a team and work together as a team. Form an opinion based on knowledge and research, think outside the box, listen to other people, learn how to lose and of course, how to win. What to do when things do not go as planned, how to take responsibility for your own actions and so much more. Learning games do exactly that. They are a great way to learn these strategies, in a controlled and safe environment.

A learning game is designed to enhance learning. So, what exactly distinguishes a regular game from a learning game?

Key Characteristics of a Learning Game

Challenge is created by having clear, fixed goals that are relevant for the learner. Uncertain outcomes provide challenge by offering variable difficulty levels, hidden information, and randomness. Feedback on performance should be frequent, unambiguous, and supportive. Lastly, the activity should promote feelings of competence for the person involved.

Curiosity exists in two different forms: sensory curiosity and cognitive curiosity. Audio and visual effects, particularly, in computer games may enhance sensory curiosity. When learners are surprised or intrigued by paradoxes, or incompleteness, it arouses cognitive curiosity.

Control is experienced as feelings of self-determination and control on the part of the learner. The ingredients of contingency, choice, and power contribute to the control feature of the learning experience. When the individuals face choices that produce powerful effect, it increases their sense of personal control.

Fantasy encompasses both the emotions and thinking process of the learner. Fantasies should appeal not only to the emotional needs of learners, but should provide relevant metaphors or analogies. Lastly, fantasies should have an integral relationship to the material covered. (Dodge 2000) http://www.eduweb.com/schaller-games.pdf

What defines an activity as a game?

Competition: the score-keeping element and/or winning conditions which motivate the players and provide an assessment of their performance. Note that players are not necessarily competing against each other. In fact, a lot of games have players working as a team to overcome some obstacle or opponent which is built into the game.
Engagement: Once the learner starts, he or she does not want to stop before the game is over. Lepper and Cordova (1992) refer to this phenomenon as "intrinsic motivation" and ascribe it to four sources: challenge, curiosity, control, and fantasy.
Immediate Rewards: Players receive victory or points, sometimes even descriptive feedback, as soon as goals are accomplished.

Learning games are divided into these different categories:

• Video games: These are played over the Internet, on personal computers, or on specific game consoles hooked up to televisions. Many young adults, including college students, spend hours every week playing computer games.
• Role-playing games: These are generally cooperative and highly engaging with a subtle way of handling scoring (partly with "experience points").
• Board and Card Games: These tend to emphasize strategy elements rather than being completely random games of chance. Some of board and miniature games take hours or even days to play.
• Sports: Not just soccer or football, but impromptu games of Frisbee, pool, air hockey, etc.
• Scavenger Hunts, Raffles, etc.: When these events are organized as fundraisers, they tend to be quite popular with students.

Pros of the gamified classroom:

Increases Student Engagement:  Studies have shown that students are more likely to spend time playing a learning-based game if you are using a reward system

Creates Enthusiasm: Games can be used to foster feelings of enthusiasm towards the subject-matter

Provides instant Feedback: Most gamification systems allow for instantaneous feedback such as leaderboards and dashboards which students can use to see where they stand among their peers. This information can push a student to try the quiz or activity again to get a higher placement and creates motivation for further lesson engagement.

Makes Social Connections: Gamified classrooms, seated and virtual, help students who have trouble with social interaction and give them a reason to work together.

Cons of Gamified Classroom

Decreases Student Attention Span: Critics of gamified learning believe that the fast pace and immediate feedback creates a problem with student attention span. Students may begin to expect the same kind of responses from all parts of their education and won’t find it, leading to frustration.

Cost: The costs of gamified learning are varied based on the type of system you are using. Sometimes these costs are passed on to the students, creating a higher barriers entry into the classroom.

Student Assessment: It is not always easy to find a good fit between the games on the market and your course materials so this can be a time-consuming process.

Game logistics: Many times, setting up a game for your course requires a lot of prior planning and logistics, which can be very time-consuming. https://blog.tophat.com/gamified-learning/

Games help us develop non-cognitive skills that the panelists agreed are as fundamental as cognitive skills in explaining how we learn and if we succeed. According to Gee, skills such as patience and discipline, which one should acquire as a child but often does not, correlate with success better than IQ scores do. And those non-cognitive skills – that is, not what you know but how you behave – are far better suited to a game context than to a traditional classroom and textbook context. http://news.stanford.edu/2013/03/01/games-education-tool-030113/

Games enhance learning through the process of switching from one mode to another. Board games, for example use different modes like: reading texts, thinking of strategies to successfully play the game, listening to what other players are saying and using that information in the game, the use of pictures and activities like rolling dices of move around.

Also in video games, people learn via multimodel knowledge representation (sound, hand-eye-coordination, information on the screen), which is a powerful way to make meaning.

But using a game in the classroom should feel like playing, not learning. The quote below is something I strongly believe in as a parent and as an educator:

"PLAYING SHOULD BE FUN! In our great eagerness to teach our children we studiously look for "educational" toys, games with built-in lessons, books with a "message." Often these "tools" are less interesting and stimulating than the child's natural curiosity and playfulness. Play is by its very nature educational. And it should be pleasurable. When the fun goes out of play, most often so does the learning."
- Joanne E. Oppenheim (Kids and Play, ch. 1, 1984)