Gamification in Education: A Passing Trend or a Genuine Potential?

Traditional schooling is perceived by many students as ineffective and boring. Although teachers continuously seek novel instructional approaches, it is largely agreed that today's schools face major problems around student motivation and engagement. The use of educational games as learning tools is a promising approach. Games have remarkable motivational power. They utilize a number of mechanisms to encourage people to engage with them, often without any reward, just for the joy of playing and the possibility to win. However, creating a highly engaging, full-blown educational game is difficult, time consuming and costly and typically targets only a single set of learning objectives as chosen by the game designer. Yet, the effective classroom adoption of games requires an appropriate pedagogical integration and sometimes a certain technical infrastructure. Can we then, instead of using full-scale games, incorporate game thinking and game design elements in the learning environment as an alternative, less costly and more flexible approach to improving learners' engagement and motivation? Gamification -- the use of game design elements in non-game contexts -- has already seen a successful adoption in many areas including business, marketing, politics, health, fitness and travel. It seems surprising that the education is not in the list of "success stories" yet. Is this just a matter of late reaction or a wait for more persuasive evidence? Can gamification be used in an educational context as well and if so, which are the factors promising success? The talk will explore these questions giving specific attention to the motivational factors that impact learning and behaviour change and will present an overview of the current state of the art and the challenges in using gamification in education.