The Benefits Of Gamification In Schools

Video games have come along way since I was in school. Many video games that I remember were highly entertaining and hardly had an educational aspect to it. What I have been noticing is that many video games today are very much taking an educational aspect to it. Companies are deliberately creating video games for students that actually help them reach their full potential in school. I find this very benefiting as many students today and in the future will grow up in an age were technology will dominate school and their lives. Video games are rapidly changing to meet curriculum expectations for schools, and their are many aspects that help students learn, but the biggest benefit that I can find that video games have is gamification. Through this essay, one will be discussing, what gamification is, its benefits in regards to motivation and the types of motivations, why it should be used in the classroom and finally my opinion on why it will be one of the greatest tools teachers like me can use in the future.

What is gamification? Gamification as defined by Hamari, Koivisto and Sarsa is a process of enhancing services with (motivational) affordances in order to invoke gameful experiences and further behavioral outcomes (2014). The first documented use of the term was in …show more content…
For example, achievement badges and The Boy Scouts of America. The Boy Scouts and later Girl Scouts of America began handing out merit badges in 1911 and continue to do so even today (Deterding, 2012). This extra - circular activity understood the motivational power of goals, mastery seeking, reputation, and identity signalling with valued accomplishments (Deterding, 2012). This in gamification terms badgification (Coulton, 2011). By integrating badgification into the classroom in both video games and through things like stickers, it will promote extrinsic