Why competing is better than cramming: our experience of gamification training
Today I wanted to tell you that we completed a single workout in the English Wrd Mania application (a mobile application for the expansion of English lexical stock), as one of the improvements made by the Habr community. However, testing of the new function has been delayed, so the discussion will focus on the effectiveness of the principle of gamification of training that we use.
Some teaching methods are considered classical, they are widely used, and most of them are reduced to memorizing unfamiliar words, and then gradually using them in teaching dialogues. repetition is the mother of learning. ”
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They are convinced that results in expanding lexical baggage can be achieved only by archic memorization. We, on the contrary, believe that memorization is one of the most primitive and inefficient methods, and the learning process should involve the learner. Under the cut, I will explain in more detail.
So, what prompted us to make the process actually a game built on a competitive principle. It is known that the game is the kind of activity that carries a person more than others. This is due to the fact that the game reduces the conditions to a minimum of known rules, exaggerates reality to an exciting process, allowing attention to focus on it completely.
This is often the reason for the emergence of food addiction, when the natural need for gaming activities and the ability to receive money from gambling form an irresistible craving to play. The same can be said about the addiction from classic computer games, when the same need for gaming activities is combined with the desire to escape from reality or to prove their worth in countless cyber-sports.
Human attachment to the gameplay is not always so destructive and, we are convinced, can be useful. For example, if we are talking about routine actions, then by filling them with game content and adding a competitive principle, you can change their perception and get a result faster. The creation of this kind of content today is called gamification.
We noticed that exactly the same actions lead to different results depending on how they are perceived. So, if you simply invite a group of students to perform a laboratory, the result will have to wait a predictable long, and the involvement in the process will be relatively low. At the same time, if you divide them into two subgroups, say that for each stage of the laboratory points are awarded (whoever completes the stage earlier - gets more), and as a result the automatic subgroup is guaranteed an automatic machine by offset, the results will suddenly appear, the process will be much higher.
As a confirmation of my words, I can cite Designing Digitally - a studio that develops products in the field of electronic game training and educational games. Today, Nasa, P & G, Bridgestone and Toyota are customers of this company. Andrew Hughes, the founder and director of the studio is a kind of guru of the gaming training industry, Steve Jobs for everyone who is developing in this area. Interestingly, we learned about his methods after the appearance of our project and realized that we are acting on the same principles.
By the way, one should distinguish between gamification and game learning, since these are similar terms, but not identical to each other. If by game learning they mean free development activities during the game (as if you were learning the basics of civil defense, playing Fallout 4 or other survival). When gamification is used, a non-gaming technique is used, which by means of changes and additions acquires gaming properties and begins to be perceived by the participants in the learning process as a game. And this is our case.
We did not conduct neurobiological and psychological-pedagogical research on the effectiveness of our principle of gamification. At the start, we had neither the resources nor the time for that. However, due to certain experience, at the level of intuition, we understood that an element of interactive social interaction should be introduced into the process.
Those. Not just turning the process of cramming into a game, but also incorporating socially conditioned motivation into the process, and nothing better than online competition did not occur to us.
I can highlight several advantages of the competitive principle in gamification of remembering new words:
As a result, we came to the principle that is implemented in the simulator at the moment and continue to refine the competitive mechanism. Now we are thinking about creating user ratings, virtual rewards and a system of individual goals that can be used to increase the effectiveness of training.
When there are more users of the application, perhaps we will come to the conclusion that it will be even more effective to select an opponent on certain lists of topics that interest him. In addition, we already understand that there is a need for a toggle switch of the difficulty level, so that any user can choose the appropriate level of difficulty for him.
I sincerely hope that our experience and ideas about gamification will be useful to the community. We once again want to thank everyone who wrote to us in the comments and gave recommendations about previous versions. A lot of what was written turned out to be really valuable. We continue to refine the application, very soon there will be a release of the next version. Next up is the single player and the iOS version. We traditionally appreciate your comments and advice.
We have borrowed images (if they belong to you and you are against - write to us, replace):
hrland.org/geymifikatsiya-v-hr
twitter.com/Deepcoolglobal
Some teaching methods are considered classical, they are widely used, and most of them are reduced to memorizing unfamiliar words, and then gradually using them in teaching dialogues. repetition is the mother of learning. ”
')
They are convinced that results in expanding lexical baggage can be achieved only by archic memorization. We, on the contrary, believe that memorization is one of the most primitive and inefficient methods, and the learning process should involve the learner. Under the cut, I will explain in more detail.
Maximum gamification
So, what prompted us to make the process actually a game built on a competitive principle. It is known that the game is the kind of activity that carries a person more than others. This is due to the fact that the game reduces the conditions to a minimum of known rules, exaggerates reality to an exciting process, allowing attention to focus on it completely.
This is often the reason for the emergence of food addiction, when the natural need for gaming activities and the ability to receive money from gambling form an irresistible craving to play. The same can be said about the addiction from classic computer games, when the same need for gaming activities is combined with the desire to escape from reality or to prove their worth in countless cyber-sports.
Human attachment to the gameplay is not always so destructive and, we are convinced, can be useful. For example, if we are talking about routine actions, then by filling them with game content and adding a competitive principle, you can change their perception and get a result faster. The creation of this kind of content today is called gamification.
We noticed that exactly the same actions lead to different results depending on how they are perceived. So, if you simply invite a group of students to perform a laboratory, the result will have to wait a predictable long, and the involvement in the process will be relatively low. At the same time, if you divide them into two subgroups, say that for each stage of the laboratory points are awarded (whoever completes the stage earlier - gets more), and as a result the automatic subgroup is guaranteed an automatic machine by offset, the results will suddenly appear, the process will be much higher.
As a confirmation of my words, I can cite Designing Digitally - a studio that develops products in the field of electronic game training and educational games. Today, Nasa, P & G, Bridgestone and Toyota are customers of this company. Andrew Hughes, the founder and director of the studio is a kind of guru of the gaming training industry, Steve Jobs for everyone who is developing in this area. Interestingly, we learned about his methods after the appearance of our project and realized that we are acting on the same principles.
By the way, one should distinguish between gamification and game learning, since these are similar terms, but not identical to each other. If by game learning they mean free development activities during the game (as if you were learning the basics of civil defense, playing Fallout 4 or other survival). When gamification is used, a non-gaming technique is used, which by means of changes and additions acquires gaming properties and begins to be perceived by the participants in the learning process as a game. And this is our case.
Competition - a catalyst for gamified training
We did not conduct neurobiological and psychological-pedagogical research on the effectiveness of our principle of gamification. At the start, we had neither the resources nor the time for that. However, due to certain experience, at the level of intuition, we understood that an element of interactive social interaction should be introduced into the process.
Those. Not just turning the process of cramming into a game, but also incorporating socially conditioned motivation into the process, and nothing better than online competition did not occur to us.
I can highlight several advantages of the competitive principle in gamification of remembering new words:
- An additional motivating factor is the gambling desire to “catch up and overtake” the opponent (or avoid defeat);
- change of motivation during training, the main desire to remember is tied to the desire to win over an opponent;
- high dynamic process with the involvement of players;
- the ability to correlate their results with the results of several rivals;
- an additional “returning” factor when you realize that one or several people are waiting for your next move (as in a simultaneous game of chess).
As a result, we came to the principle that is implemented in the simulator at the moment and continue to refine the competitive mechanism. Now we are thinking about creating user ratings, virtual rewards and a system of individual goals that can be used to increase the effectiveness of training.
When there are more users of the application, perhaps we will come to the conclusion that it will be even more effective to select an opponent on certain lists of topics that interest him. In addition, we already understand that there is a need for a toggle switch of the difficulty level, so that any user can choose the appropriate level of difficulty for him.
Total
I sincerely hope that our experience and ideas about gamification will be useful to the community. We once again want to thank everyone who wrote to us in the comments and gave recommendations about previous versions. A lot of what was written turned out to be really valuable. We continue to refine the application, very soon there will be a release of the next version. Next up is the single player and the iOS version. We traditionally appreciate your comments and advice.
We have borrowed images (if they belong to you and you are against - write to us, replace):
hrland.org/geymifikatsiya-v-hr
twitter.com/Deepcoolglobal
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/456400/
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