Gamification in education, this unknown: current trend or new learning frontier?

We are pleased to publish this contribution by Angelo Prontera on the topic of gamification in learning. New member of Stati Generali dell'Innovazione, we extend our welcome to Angelo.

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Why do games capture kids' attention? Why do playful activities involve and motivate? Why are video games so attractive? What impact can play-based learning have on the pupil? Are study and fun irreconcilable?

These are the questions that various scholars, especially in the Anglo-Saxon world, have been asking themselves in recent years, namely applying the logic of games and video games in schools.

The scientific community is quite unanimous in defining this new line of research "gamification”, a neologism that is difficult to translate into our language (gamification or gamification), used for the first time by the English programmer Nick Pelling in 2002, a term which however gained popularity starting from 2010 when it was adopted by the American professor and famous game designer , Jesse Schell during a conference held in Las Vegas.

Thus, scholars such as James Paul Gee¹ have focused on the principles of learning in video games and their transferability in education, Elizabeth Corcoran² founded Lucere, an organization dedicated to helping educators find and use the most appropriate technology to inspire students. The researcher of the University of Florence (Department of education sciences and psychology), Romina Nesti³, instead, is dealing with the playful universe and its relationship with training and was an advocate and teacher of the recent MOOC "Gamification in education: new ways to learn!"⁴.

What is gamification or gamification

Born and used in the field of marketing to motivate the purchase of a product, today it is the object of research and experimentation to improve forms of learning and to adapt it to school contexts.

Per Sebastian Deterding, founder and current director of the Research Network Gamification⁵ and researcher at Northeastern University in Boston, gamification is the use of elements borrowed from games and game design techniques in contexts outside games (“The use of game design elements in non-game contexts”).

Gamification, therefore, can be defined as the use of game design elements in non-game contexts, such as teaching and school learning environments, among others.

The pedagogist Aldo Visalberghi used the term "ludiform" to indicate activities and objectives external to the game, the aim of which is not pursued within the game itself which takes place and does not end with the game.

According to the aforementioned Italian researcher, Romina Nesti, gamification is a set of processes and practices where, through the use of playful dynamics, mechanics and strategies, one tries to motivate, activate and involve someone to act in a non-playful context. There gamification so it's not a game, but it exists thanks to it.

Another authoritative definition is that of Karl Kapp (2012)⁶, professor of educational technology at Bloomsburg University of Pennsylvania, according to which the gamification is the use of playful game mechanics, game aesthetics, and playful thinking to motivate people to take action, promote learning, and solve problems.

There gamification it is, or could become, an interesting teaching tool because it bases its action on the motivational dimension and the pleasure of learning.

What pedagogical logic "informs" gamification?

The logic that underlies the different forms of gamification can be traced back to the theories of behaviorism and therefore most of the simple forms of gamification are based on the stimulus-response paradigm, a playful stimulus, which reinforces the behavior of a subject because brings him pleasure.

Other anchorages, however, can be found in the learning by doing by Dewey, in active teaching, in learning how to learn of Bruner, in constructivism, especially the Piagettian one (the symbolic game of the pre-operative stage), up to the connectivism of George Siemens. But references to "play", as a powerful stimulus to the child's learning and development, can already be found in Tommaso Campanella who for the first time speaks of the importance of play and learning by playing), in Bruner, Vygotsky, Winnicot, Fröbel (kindergartens and play), in Idit Harel (playful learning in average MaMaMa), just to name a few.

But game theory, as stated by the Swiss scholar Norberto Bottani⁷, has been misunderstood by schools as the step that forces us to abandon an authoritarian, standardized and disciplinary didactic conception of learning to embrace a playful and personalized conception has not been taken.

Gamification and school: possible combination?

The interest of recent research from the academic community is aimed at identifying the links and correlations between the gamification (which has found wide application in the field of marketing) and pupils' learning at school, and how to transfer fun, pleasure, involvement (engagement), motivation and participation, which are the basis of gamification he was born in game base learning⁸, to the world of school and teaching. A current that various scholars are approaching by trying to identify analogies and affinities between two worlds, the playful and the purely scholastic, identifying their dynamics (the aspects relating to the construction of processes, the desires and needs that users feel the need to satisfy), the mechanics (concepts capable of increasing interest, prompting participation and commitment: in short, they concern, to remain in the behavioral sphere, the system of rewards) and the components (the tools: prizes, challenges, badges, teams, etc.).

However, there are many experiments taking place in the Anglo-Saxon scholastic world, not only by scholars but also by teachers, such as Justin Ballou⁹, a Boston-area high school teacher who started using the gamification in his class when he was trying to figure out how to motivate students: the idea is to make the assignments more fun, engaging, rewarding and the lesson more interesting and captivating than the traditional passive learning model.

In Italy, however, the expression gamification it has not yet become part of the didactic curriculum, nor of the ministerial documents, of the scholastic institutions, nor is it part of the initial and/or in-service training of the teaching staff.

To date, in our didactic and educational panorama, this new methodology seems to be a frontier to be explored, even if for the future there are interesting scenarios and horizons, not only for the Bel Paese, but above all to be discovered.

Obviously, as the Latin philosopher Seneca wrote "Ignoranti quem portum petat nullus suus ventus est" and therefore no wind of novelty, no innovation will be favorable for the helmsman and for the sailors who will not know where to direct the sails and in which port to land.

Angelo Prontera

Bibliography and sitography

-What is and what is not Gamification: http://www.gameifications.com/gamification/cosa-e-e-cosa-non-e-gamification/

-What is gamification: http://www.gamification.it/gamification/introduzione-alla-gamification/

-What is gamification, and why can it become an effective lever of brand engagement?

http://www.bewe.it/2013/09/11/gamification-brand-engagement/

-Gamification: https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamification

-Gamification: fashion or paradigm shift?, by Norberto Bottani: http://ospitiweb.indire.it/adi/SemFeb2016/Sm16_111_abstract_Bottani.htm

-Elements of gamification applied to mathematics learning, thesis in Multimedia systems, by Timothy Baldi. Alma Mater Studiorum, University of Bologna. AY 2014/2015. http://amslaurea.unibo.it/9525/1/baldi_timothy_tesi.pdf