18-1-23 – Part 2 GBL V Gamification
Over time at school, I have introduced an element of games in many of my library lessons, with activities involving matching, and reordering different elements of information to teach information skills. I now know that these are Game Based Learning (GBL) activities. I have thought using Games and Gamification as the same thing, and often used the terms interchangeably. But know I understand them to be separate approaches.
Hussaini, N, etal, (2021) have produced this very useful table which distinguishes between the two.
The Advanced-HE website (Accessed 6/3/2023) define the terms as follows:
“Digital Games-Based Learning is the integration of gaming into learning experiences to increase engagement and motivation.
Gamification refers to the use of a pedagogical system that was developed within gaming design but which is implemented within a non-game context. “
There are so many opportunities to use Gamification in education and it is being widely used in schools to help motivate children from a young age into Higher Education, with new software being developed all of the time.
I have been using the Accelerated Reader reading program to help motivate pupils to read for several years. However, I had never considered it to be a Gamification tool until now. It has all of the elements described above, rewarding pupils when they reach certain goals, to help motivate and engage.
Game based learning is something very different, and is what I use during lessons, not only because it is fun and helps to engage pupils, it has many other benefit too.
It helps to foster collaborative learning with students able to discuss and learn from each other, solving problems helps them to learn at a higher level, and therefore helps to ensure retention of knowledge. Confidence is improved too, as is creativity and critical thinking. Teachers can give immediate feedback, mistakes can be corrected there and then. Another benefit is that it is suited to most if not all learning styles, Hussaini, N, et al, (2021).
Both GBL and Gamification can be both physical and digital, but with the development of technology there is greater scope for and increased numbers of digital developments.
There are many programs being developed for GBL and Gamification if schools, Higher Education and even in University Libraries, for example the university of Florida’s collaboration with Faculty members to develop their own game “Gaming Against Plagiarism” game, Buhler, A etal, (2011), in an attempt to combat increasing incidents of plagiarism.
GBL and Gamification have grown in popularity and are widely used, researched, and written about. In 2014, Mazeyanti Mohd Ariffin, Alan Oxley, Suziah Sulaiman recorded in their paper, Evaluating Game-based Learning Effectiveness in Higher Education, that, when carrying out a search for Game Based Learning, the result was 162 million hits on Google with 2.37 million on Google Scholar. The same search today produced 1,400,000,000 results and almost 5.5 million hits on Google scholar. That’s a lot of hits and a big increase in less than 10 years!
How did I get onto the subject of GBL?
Oh yeah! GBL is another example of an activity-based pedagogy which is a student-centered pedagogy. It is growing in popularity, and adopted widely at all levels, and used increasingly in digital format in Higher Education.
References
Advanced-HE, (2020). Gamification and Games Based Learning. Available at: https://www.advance-he.ac.uk/knowledge-hub/gamification-and-games-based-learning. Accessed: 6/3/23.
Buhler, A. G., & Leonard, M., & Johnson, M., & DeVane, B. (2011), Gaming Against Plagiarism: A Partnership between the Library and Faculty Paper presented at 2011 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Vancouver, BC. 10.18260/1-2—18015.Available at: file:///C:/Users/daddio/Downloads/gaming-against-plagiarism-a-partnership-between-the-library-and-faculty.pdf, Accessed:6/3/23
Hussaini, N, et al, (2021). Game Based Learning in Higher Education: An Effective Pedagogical Tool for Enhanced Competency Building. Available at: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/357934412_Game-Based_Learning_in_Higher_EducationAn_Effective_Pedagogical_Tool_for_Enhanced_Competency_Building. Accessed: 4/3/23
Mazeyanti Mohd Ariffin, Alan Oxley, Suziah Sulaiman, (2014), Evaluating Game-based Learning Effectiveness in Higher Education. Available at: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/275543569_Evaluating_Game-Based_Learning_Effectiveness_in_Higher_Education Accessed:3/3/23
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