Gamification – How Game Mechanics Is Reshaping Our Education

We know how important it is to make learning fun for our children, so why not do the same for everyone? Game mechanics are integrated into something that already exists, such as a lesson plan, website, or training session. Once they’re integrated, the tasks involved with these areas are now more exciting.

Gamification is used for several educational purposes. It’s now found within classrooms, businesses, and much more. Gamification has become popular due to its ability to heighten the levels of engagement for tasks that would otherwise be boring. Want to learn more about how gamification is reshaping our education? Keep reading.

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It’s Building Confidence

Games in both the workplace and the classroom help reduce stress. They’re also a great way to encourage learning with a more relaxed environment. Children and adults alike are more willing to learn something new when it’s presented to them in a fun way. Teachers have seen an improvement of test scores for those children using gamification.

This is true in both the classroom and at home. And because these programs allow you to see your progress, users can correct their own mistakes and self-learn. Once progress is made, users begin to feel a sense of confidence in knowing that they can reach their goals. Some of the classroom gamification programs include familiar names such as ABCMouse.

It’s Promoting Real-World Problem Solving

Gamification is an awesome approach for teaching children how to solve real-world problems. This topic has been a debate for quite some time now. More people believe in the significance of teaching real-world problem solving to students, such as how to file taxes or how to take out a loan.

Gamification teaches students how to learn and how to think. It offers just the right amount of competition and satisfaction when a new level is completed. Throughout all of this, it encourages students to collaborate with one another, to think critically, and to be curious.

As the world advances in technology, there are more and more ways to present fake news. It’s important to teach children how to analyze information to determine its credibility rather than merely taking what’s given and accepting it as the truth. Gamification does this by providing a safe environment for students to fail and then correct those mistakes.

It’s Helping Teachers In The Classroom

Gamification largely helps teachers in the classroom. Instead of a dull and dry environment, gamification takes learning to a whole new level. When teachers have goals in place for their students and understand the gamification program, the two are combined with increasing the success rate in the classroom.

Teachers set specific times during the school day to have students work on their educational games. The students work mostly independently while the teachers walk around helping those in need. The students become more independent with their learning. And they strive to reach their goals whether it be passing a certain level, collecting a certain amount of points, or more.

It’s Getting Students Excited

Gamification is not only making games educational, but it’s getting adult and children students excited about learning. These games provide the motivation that people need to accomplish different tasks.

For example, Breakout Games has a variety of escape rooms where visitors are challenged to work with one another to solve puzzles, find clues, and accomplish the mission. These are all real-world problem-solving techniques that are beneficial to anyone. Those playing the game get excited about completing the challenge. And they are then motivated to do so.

Because of this, escape rooms have now become a huge part of gamification for education in the classroom. For example, some escape room themes used for the classroom involve an Astro setting. All of the activities and puzzles that must be solved to escape are all educationally based on the theme.

It’s Training Police And Firefighters

As mentioned before, gamification for education isn’t only used in the school classroom. It’s also used for training police and firefighters. For police training, the police are put into simulations that depict real-life scenarios that they could possibly encounter.

The simulator has five screens that completely surround the police officers, giving an almost 360-degree view of what’s going on around them. This makes the simulation feel much more real. The journey that the police in training takes throughout the simulation is based upon the decisions that he or she makes while “playing.”

These officers in training are also given life-like devices that act and weigh as a normal firearm would. Some firefighter programs also allow trainees to experience training via gamification. It’s a fantastic way to bring those real-life scenarios to the trainees without placing their lives, or anyone else lives in danger.

It’s Creating Health And Safety Portals

Health and safety training has now gone digital and interactive. DTS’s Near-Life learning approach program offers its users real-life scenarios. To do so, they use a creative storyline. The outcome of the “game” depends on the choices that the user makes. It’s time-sensitive and tracks the users’ preferences for them. Actors were used in the creation of the storyline, so users get that sense of life-life situations and urgency.

Exploring The Benefits Of Gamification In Education

From the classroom to the training field, gamification has made its mark on education. Students of all ages and in all journies of life can now rely on gamification to build their confidence, teach them problem-solving skills, get them excited and motivate them, and teach them in a safe environment. Gamification in education is the future. And for more innovative topics, be sure to check back with us frequently!

If you are interested in even more technology-related articles and information from us here at Bit Rebels, then we have a lot to choose from.

IMAGE: PEXELS