Gamification of Education

By Harry Smals on 27 May 2011

One of the trends that came forward during the Media Future Week 2011 in Almere, was Gamification and Chris Crawford gave a very inspiring presentation about game design. In his vision a game designer is god of the universe that he creates for the game. What could this mean for education?

Illustration copied from: http://exiledonline.com/facebook-friends-god-died-to-get-away-from-us/

Crawford says that a game designer can be either an “interventionist god” or a “clockwork god”.The interventionist god controls everything in this universe. This god says: “Adam, move from here to there, yes and move some more, that’s good and now move this. Butterfly, flap that wing once. Raindrop, I need you to fall another millimeter. Leaf, photosynthesize a little more sunlight. River, I want you to flow one nanometer.etc. etc.” Writing software like this is a lot of work and very difficult to specify enough things in it to make a game interesting.

On the other hand, the clockwork god does not specify every detail instead it only specifies the laws of nature. This god creates all the wheels and leavers that control the universe, and all he has to do is wind it up and let it run.

The interventionist god deals in facts and details, the clockwork god deals in principles and abstractions. Intellectually the clockwork god is more challenging. Crawford concludes that the interventionist god deals in determinism, the clockwork god in free will. Someone who beliefs in determinism does not feel responsible for his deeds, he might kill a lot of people because he feels that god made him do it. He did not necessarily want this but he feels just a puppet on a string.

Not difficult to see an American vision here: the free world fighting against the Taliban. “Taliban” means “student” and they mainly learn the Koran by heart. They know every detail and all the facts; they know all the rules according to which you should live. The free world, on the other hand, promotes freedom for everybody to live as he/ she wants. You can wear what you want, say what you want and go where you want. The same American mentality is behind the fight of the free individual against the government who wants to intervene in people’s lives with laws and taxes.

What do these opposite visions mean for games? Games should be interactive, that is ultimately what makes them different from a movie or a book. Books and movies are deterministic media created by “interventionist gods”: all facts and details are given, nothing can be altered, everything that happens is determined. We need free will for an interactive game, Crawford says; playing is about making choices. Therefore game developers should be clockwork gods, dealing in principles and abstractions, leaving room for the individual free will to make choices.

Consequently, in a game – and in an interactive medium in general – there are several ways to reach your goal. Your goal, not necessarily the goal that the creator has set. There is not only one scenario, but many possible scenario’s and combinations of scenario’s plus variations and deviations of scenario’s. Yes it is possible to play the game and go to the next level as quick as possible; but many people just play for fun and want to look around, do things, without feeling the urge to reach the ultimate goal – winning – that the programmer god has set.

Let’s analyze education according to these ideas. A school is a universe with its own set of rules and regulations. Traditionally the teacher is seen as a kind of messenger from god. Some of my students who come from countries less progressive than Netherland still have that attitude. They are used to a teacher sitting behind a desk on a stage, reading from a book. A book is determinist medium, an exam is a test to find out if the student can repeat what is in the book. All facts and details can be asked, they all are equally relevant to pass. If the student passes all the tests he can go to the next level/ class. At the end of the study this game is over, he is rewarded with a diploma and he can start working in the real world. This real world has another set of rules and regulations and it takes some time and mistakes to learn them.

In the traditional school situation the student may not feel responsible for his deeds: I do not want to know this, do not want to do this, but school demands it from me. In this situation school provides a determinist universe. A universe managed on facts and details: diploma’s and marks are the measurable facts that count. This system rewards calculating students and schools: it is not about learning something, but about passing tests. Responsibility lays with the people who make the test, or with the people who make a by-pass program for tests – as happened at InHolland.

A school based on determinism is obsolete, it is time for a school based on free will. A school where a student is responsible for his own decisions and his own deeds, just as in the real world that he will enter after graduating. The student should have the freedom to learn what he wants within the limitations of the universe created by school.

This school will NOT be ruled by scenario’s dictated by school-books: lessons that treat the chapters of a book leading to an exam in which is tested if the content of the book was transported to the brain. This school should be ruled by principles and abstractions. True, developing this kind of school is intellectually more challenging and will equally be more intellectually challenging for students. This kind of school should not just be aimed on quantity but also on quality. And quality can’t be measured, because if we do it becomes quantity, expressed in facts and details.

tagged with: quality, determinism, gamification, education

Comments

Dick Vestdijk on 27 May 2011 at 13:11

Thought provoking article, Harry. Thanks for sharing.

The first part reminds me of Spinoza, and what Menno ter Braak wrote about his Ethica.
The second part - about books being deterministic - that is an interesting observation on which I tend to kindly disagree. As one can read in The shallows by Nicholas Carr, the brain is altered (learns) when being in touch with a medium (be it film, book, twitter). When you read a text, your own imagination is doing something with the thoughts. On general I agree with you, we don’t need a deterministic school (although this seems more true for the 3d and 4th year and less for the first two years) - and consequently the books and tweets should challenge the intellect. So, no bible either as book or as tweet.

Harry on 27 May 2011 at 19:58

Thank you Dick!
Indeed people’s brains process information individually and consequently what is offered in a book can not be exactly the same as what the writer thought to put in it. Still I think that a book is deterministic because the end of the story is already determined, the reader can not change the behaviour of the characters.

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