Tried "Gamification" in my classroom.(Check updated post 283 for User Group info, it's now ready)

[godofallu]

The entire experiment boiled down into this.

Class A - I used negative reinforcement
Class B- I bribed them

"Bribery" as you call it - also known as 'Positive Reinforcement' - is realms more effective in producing long term effects. Negative reinforcement is actually likely to discourage participation.

That was kind of my point, negative reinforcement is commonly known to fail.

 

[Venereus]

It's still just applied behaviorism, gamification just refined it. Seriously, we should be leaving behaviorism behind, not improving it.

Why? Human beings are animals. It's time it was exploited for good instead of evil, like most companies do.

We're animals who can do better.

We can do better, yes, but you can't modify someone's behaviour as much as people claim you can.
They must be receptive and have a predisposition to the behaviour or else you're going to have to seriously fuck with how their body behaves.

A child doesn't grow up to be abusive because he was abused, but because he shares the genes of his abusive father.

Biologicist answers are always shortsighted and don't add much to pedagogy. I can't take those explanations seriously. No one should.

And I can't take anyone seriously who's going to ignore modern psychology because they don't like how it sounds.

Modern psychology =/= Neuroscience.

...I take it you haven't done much reading recently?
About resilience and susceptibility? About predisposition? About the role of genetics in ability? About behaviour?
The fact that children develop their own set of morals irrespective of their upbringing, and that adopted children resemble their biological parents by way of behaviour even if their influence has only been minor?

Sure I have, but I don't go and say "yup, I now know exactly how things work" after reading what's really just one side of the story, and a very biased one at that. I'm not saying genetics have no influence, but thinking it's the only meaningful one is just shorsighted and very dangerous politically speaking.

 

[Chiefwakka]

The major problem I see is if it becomes a constant thing it may end up being ignored after awhile. There are some work arounds to that though. Perhaps having larger prizes but only provide them after several classes.

For example: you could have a list of 50 achievements and give whoever manages to get them all a free "I can skip this test!" ticket (I know I would prefer that to a piece of candy anyways). You could have achievements for attending classes for three weeks straight, doing several extra assignments, asking questions/giving input for discussion, etc.

The trick is to only have five or so "easy" achievements available each day. Stuff like showing up for class for a period of time would be available all the time but if you are planning on having a discussion heavy class make the participation achievement available for that day but don't have the no electronic devices one available. The idea being that if they are discussing the topic they either don't have time to use their phone or they can look up information with it (or just screw around like they always do but hey whatever).

Granted my example probably wasn't the best but I think you will get the idea. I just fear that your particular method, while quite appropriate for subbing won't work well for full time teaching. As much as they like it, there will come a time when the kids won't care about the candy and will go back to goofing off.

Yup, this won't work for a long term class. But, I just got off the phone with the teacher I was subbing for today and I who I will sub for this Thursday and she loved idea and asked if we could meet sometime this week and perhaps organize some long term applications for Gamification.

So the opportunity to try different methods, apart from just achievements, presents itself

That just gave me an idea for some reason. You could have people level up from assignments and tests. Basically their score is the experience. Every time they gather 100 experience(or whatever number you think is fair) they gain a level and can choose an ability. Abilities could be stuff like "The rich get richer" (5% bonus to test scores 90 becomes 94.5, 80 becomes 84, etc), "Vanish" (get out of one direct question posed towards them with a cooldown of 1 class period), "reincarnation" (retake a test, with different questions, one time only), etc.

Uh oh, somebody busting out the WoW abilities...GO GO ROGUE/Shaman combo That's actually not a bad idea though. May have to phrase it differently, but being able to do something, like get out of a homework assignment would be good. I subbed for a teacher who handed out "get out of homework free" cards and I had a few kids hand those to me. When I was in the lounge that day I was told by another teacher that some students actually went to the effort to forge counterfeit cards.

They were all serious and dissing on the teacher (from their tone) and I just laughed and said, "heck that takes initiative, you know hard it is to teach that today? I salute her for that alone."

 

[Bara_no_Hime]

**snip**

Holy crap!

I spent some time working as a High School Substitute. It was HELL.

That is simply amazing. I wish I'd known about this years ago, so I could have used it myself. Brilliantly done.

 

[Venereus]

It's still just applied behaviorism, gamification just refined it. Seriously, we should be leaving behaviorism behind, not improving it.

Why? Human beings are animals. It's time it was exploited for good instead of evil, like most companies do.

We're animals who can do better.

No, we aren't. Not on a subconscious level, which is what this taps into. Besides, are you really against kids learning?

Tell me more about this "subconscious level" of yours. What does it mean to you? Where does it come from? Why sould I believe you?

I haven't said anything that might point to me being against kids learning. Did you misunderstood or just trolling?

Your subconscious is the part of you that's just as primitive as a rat or dog. It's the base impulses, the illogical learned behaviors (phobias, for example) and the stuff that falls for those kinds of things. These kids learned more by using these techniques, yet you are against them. You are against things that help kids learn. You are against them learning.

Still missing the most important of my questions. Why should I believe what you're saying? What's backing your statements?

I really don't have time to look everything up. Believe me or don't, but explain where our baser, animistic, instincts come from otherwise.

What basic instincts? Socialization explains human behavior much better than "we are born knowing" and "we're pogrammed to".

Not everything is a learned behavior.

Not everything, but definitely most of it. Guess which way of looking at it serves pedagogy better.

 

[Foxbat Flyer]

Awesome work, I wish the teachers at my school when i was there did that

 

[Jodah]

snip cause its getting long!

Hah, yea I play too much WoW. Most of my ideas took all of 5 minutes to come up with so I agree you will likely have to modify them if you want to use them. Thats how my brain usually works. I can come up with the big picture ideas and I make other people figure out the details. Thats why I am going into management!

 

[Chiefwakka]

*SNIP*

Tell the control group or another variable group without putting it out as achievements that they will get candy if they follow your directions to a T and I can almost guarantee the same results as your variable group. Kids LOVE candy. I can tell you from my own experience in Middle School a teacher of mine would give out candy for doing a good job or just listening to her and you got candy. Probably one of the best behaved classes I had in Middle School.

Regardless of which direction I take things, I think I will be able to create a sure-fire guide to making substitute teaching a bearable experience for those teachers who deal with tougher classrooms.

From my experiences in Middle School I have to say that my best behaved class was when the teacher told us if we behaved and followed the teachers orders we would get candy. It wasn't instant gratification as your SCHINNER BOX so there were a few students who could not go through with what the teacher told us to do.

If you want to try and make a sure-fire way for subbing in a tougher classroom do the research into what you are doing rather than saying HEY HERE IS WHAT I WANT YOU TO DO IF YOU LISTEN I WILL THROW CANDY AT YOU.

THAT is the WRONG way to do it. You need to figure out a way to get the Gameification without the reward of candy because eventually that won't matter. You need to figure out a way to make the class FUN. I am going to take an example from the cartoon RECESS and say the sub Mr Dude. In order to teach the kids about atoms he had them start passing around kick balls while explaining WHY they were doing it and what would happen if someone just stopped passing the balls which were the electrons.

There is a right way and a wrong way and you are dancing on the fine line between the two. Calling your idea GAMIFICATION I believe is the WRONG title for it. Its more like the psych test where if you perform an action you get rewarded. You put it into a pretty box that can be said as Gamification but I do not believe that you have the right idea in this at this point in time.

Nope, this idea is in it's infancy, a first impression, a rough draft if you will. I have to disagree that Gamification had nothing to do with this particular experiment. It only took me 5 minutes to set classroom expectations by presenting it in terms they understand...having a class understand that quickly is not easy and I think putting it in the form of a game helped. But again, like all rough drafts, I need to do more research, explore new topics, test, re-test, rinse, repeat, get 2 hours of sleep, and do it all over again. I think I'll enjoy it in the long run though

 

[TheYellowCellPhone]

Cool idea. I wish you were my substitute. But then again I am on Spring Break.

I don't see this working all the time with all age groups and classes.

 

[ZeZZZZevy]

Impressive, if this kind of teaching becomes more prevalent, teaching may become more productive. Looking forward to this documentary.

 

[Chiefwakka]

Cool idea. I wish you were my substitute. But then again I am on Spring Break.

I don't see this working all the time with all age groups and classes.

ROFL! Just got done with my spring break, hope you have fun with yours

 

[Chiefwakka]

Food time, be right back. I'll slip into the psychology discussion going on here in a second

 

[jovack22]

Or, students need to stop acting like they are more important than everything and should take ownership of their own education.

We are brought up "empowered" knowing we have rights, and we are all special individuals. That's fine. But we're beginning to forget about the RESPONSIBILITY, to ourselves, family, community, planet -- people are selfish these days, and it is a downward spiral

It is sad that our society has crumbled so bad. You wouldn't need this in Japan, China, India, etc.

 

[meatloaf231]

Awesome. It would vary greatly, as folks have said, based on the age group, among other things.

However, it's great to see people actually trying this stuff. For SCIENCE!

 

[Chiefwakka]

Are we learned creatures or are bred to fate..not that I want to sidestep a meaningful debate, but I think it would be better if we slipped this into a more specific context. I'd like to look at it as means and ends.

The End-

In the education community, and by this I mean teachers, students, parents, administrators, the whole lot, there are those are concerned with one thing in learning and that is results. The tug-o-war teachers have to fight is that on one hand they need create a special learning environment that caters to all their students, but on the other hand their tenures are riding on those said students passing a standardized test that could care less about the quality of learning.

That is why you'll administrators constantly harping at teachers to just "teach the test". Simply get the students to answer this said question with this said answer so the school can receive money and so you can keep your jobs. The "No Child Left Behind Act" is a good recent example of this. So you'll have teachers forgoing creative methods of teaching and instead regurgitate repetitive platitudes, endless glossaries, math formulas, and meaningless dates so that when the time comes, and they are asked to regurgitate this themselves, they can do so in the moment.

But of course, what happens in the long run? Did the student really take anything from the material? Do they remember it? Was motivation to succeed ever encouraged or were they just going through the motions? This is why we question...



The Means-

It's one thing to pass a test, but simply getting a 95 on a test is meaningless if the student simply crammed the info in his head the night before and forgets half of it the next day. By encouraging students to engage you teach them things that go beyond the material. You teach a student to be self-motivated when you get him to do homework that's fun and engaging. You teach initiative when you let students choose their own topics for a research paper rather than forcing them to do what they will see some state test.

In this documentary I will delve into both the means and ends of teaching. I think it important to concerned with how we get there as well as the destination and hopefully, what I find, will lend credence to both.

 

[Chiefwakka]

Or, students need to stop acting like they are more important than everything and should take ownership of their own education.

We are brought up "empowered" knowing we have rights, and we are all special individuals. That's fine. But we're beginning to forget about the RESPONSIBILITY, to ourselves, family, community, planet -- people are selfish these days, and it is a downward spiral

It is sad that our society has crumbled so bad. You wouldn't need this in Japan, China, India, etc.

I agree there, all would be easier if our culture were laid on the foundations of being responsible citizens, but it is what it is sadly. While responsibility may not be hard-wired in America as it should, we can instill it in our younger generation if we work at it. If I can get at least 1 student to look at life differently than he did before we crossed paths, then I feel I've earned that Jaguar sitting in my driveway...

And by Jaguar I mean PT Cruiser

 

[Drake_Dercon]

That's really really cool!
Any way we could help?

Any feedback you guys could give would be awesome. To keep the topic alive, I'm thinking I will split it up into multiple video segments and update weekly, giving my different findings and what not.

Wow. That is incredible. My only suggestion is to vary the rewards. Candy is great, but it's part of a growing health problem and some may be concerned about that. A worry of mine is that it can't last forever (added on to the candy problem). Do you have any ideas that might work on a long-term basis. Thirdly and finally: do you mind if I print out a copy of your personal studies? It might be a useful suggestion for my own class that tends to be unnecessarily rowdy and disruptive (though they don't respond terribly well to incentives, I've found), and it might help the class progress through lessons more quickly.

It's one thing to pass a test, but simply getting a 95 on a test is meaningless if the student simply crammed the info in his head the night before and forgets half of it the next day. By encouraging students to engage you teach them things that go beyond the material. You teach a student to be self-motivated when you get him to do homework that's fun and engaging. You teach initiative when you let students choose their own topics for a research paper rather than forcing them to do what they will see some state test.

In this documentary I will delve into both the means and ends of teaching. I think it important to concerned with how we get there as well as the destination and hopefully, what I find, will lend credence to both.

Talking about this one with my english teacher. I have decided to learn in class as much as I can and study when I don't understand something, but never cram. It is harmful to the learning process. I am actually working on a general outline of a system of governance that (theoretically) works better than pre-existing ones. Education is central to its function and curbing cramming has become a bit of a problem. If your study works in the long-term, natural compulsion may be a solution.

 

[teknoarcanist]

You should work in some proactive achievements as well.

"Raise your hand and successfully answer a question."
and then
"Successfully answer two questions in a row."

Big ups for this post OP. A very interesting read. You might also consider, in addition or in lieu of candy, having the achievements go towards the section of the grade that is normally set aside for 'class participation'.

 

[Kelethor]

Awesome idea. keep up the good work man!