Gerard LaFond is the VP of marketing for Pearson’s College and Career Readiness division and the co-founder of Persuasive Games. He’s currently working on the gamification of education through the Pearson start-up, Alleyoop.
Kids spend hours a day on sites like Facebook and YouTube. They play highly immersive video games, watch engrossing shows on their HDTVs and interact with apps on their mobile devices. All of this is in stark contrast to how they spend their days at school, where educators lecture and write on blackboards, then ask kids to read boring textbooks and practice abstract skills or memorize obscure facts. The cycle of lecture, test and repeat is not the best way to engage kids. In fact, it might be the best way to alienate them.
We are wasting the huge opportunity offered by technology to engage and immerse kids in curiosity-based learning and discovery. Schools should not just prepare students to pass state assessments and standardized tests. We should also prepare them for the complex real-world situations they will certainly face. If we recalibrate our education system to meet the needs of the digital natives, we can produce eager, life-long learners who are well-equipped for 21st century careers.
If we believe part of the solution to our education problems is better engagement, then perhaps we should turn to the engaging world of video games to help us get there.
The Freedom to Fail in a Safe Environment
There are many lessons from the world of video games that we can apply to education and see immediate results. For one, games can create a risk-free environment for learning and discovery. In most games, failure is a given. Often players must “die” several times before accruing the knowledge and skills necessary to win. Since a certain amount failure is normal within the game, players will naturally take the approach of trial and error to discover the path to success. This is a very effective way for teens to learn, and it does not require peers or adults telling them they did something “wrong.” Importantly, there is no shame around this type of failure; it’s simply part of the process of learning (and, eventually, winning.)
While this type of risk-free environment can be difficult to replicate in the classroom, educators and parents should keep in mind that creating opportunities for students to safely fail is the best way to ensure that real learning breakthroughs occur. Kids who are not frustrated by failure, who instead see it as part of the process, are less likely to give up on learning. This is a valuable lesson that can be modeled through learning games and applied in the real world.
The Power of Game Mechanics
Secondly, good games are designed to make players want to work hard to achieve a goal. In the game world this is known as “grinding.” Grinding is the hard (often repetitive) work that is required to achieve a desired outcome. According to Jane McGonigal, game designer and author of Reality is Broken, World of Warcraft players will spend an average of 600+ hours grinding before they get to the good stuff. Yet players will persevere because they really want to get to the good stuff. This is important, because math, like many other valuable skills, requires grinding for mastery. Why can’t school be engaging, goal-oriented and game-like? If it was, perhaps we could get teens to grind out a hundred extra hours of studying and attain better college and career prospects.
You might be skeptical about the possibility of making school fun. The truth is that school doesn’t have to be as fun as World of Warcraft — it just has to be less boring than it is today.
In addition to risk-free environments and grinding to reach goals, games have many other properties that make them a perfect vehicle to address our education problems. There has been a lot of buzz around the idea of gamification, particularly in the world of marketing. It is touted as an effective customer engagement mechanism, and many brands using game dynamics have seen positive results. If we apply this strategy to education, I believe we can realize an equally positive impact on society as a whole. If we tap into motivational game dynamics like small achievable goals, desirable rewards, constant positive feedback and compelling interactive content, then we can design an educational experience that speaks to teens.
If you’re looking for a real-world example of game dynamics being used well in the classroom, take Ananth Pai. The third grade teacher from Minnesota was disappointed in his classroom’s math scores. To improve them, he decided to “gameify” his classroom with titles like Brain Age on the Nintendo DS and Flower Power, among others. Math is a subject that requires grinding for mastery at every level, even in the 3rd grade. Pai has successfully used video games and in-class game mechanics to manage and motivate his students, improving their math scores by a significant margin.
At a recent game conference, Pai reminded us that there are real kids behind these numbers — kids with interests and passions and goals. Whether it’s the 3rd grader trying to catch up in math and reading, the 8th grader struggling with fundamental algebra skills, or the 11th grader preparing both academically and personally for college, these kids need us to design a better game. Until we have SchoolVille or World of 21st Century Skillcraft, let’s replace lectures and testing with play and discovery and begin fostering a passion for lifelong learning in all of our students.
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