Gamification (also known as gamification ) is the process by which game techniques are applied to other processes to facilitate their realization and/or understanding. Although it is used in various fields, we are going to focus on one of the main ones that concern us the most: education.
The three elements of gamification:
Best Gamification Platform is made up of three interrelated elements: dynamics, mechanics, and components.
- The dynamics are related to the motivation of the participants: they explain how the player behaves and the needs that the game satisfies. The main dynamics used in gamification are:
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- Reward: Award received for overcoming a challenge.
- Status: Recognition as a member of a community.
- Achievements: Personal satisfaction with overcoming a challenge.
- self-expression: Express autonomy, originality, and personality.
- Competition: Comparison of own results against those of others.
- Altruism: Seek the good of others without expecting anything in return.
- Mechanics are the basic components of the game, such as the rules, the engine, and how it works. The main mechanics that stimulate the dynamics mentioned above are:
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- Accumulation of points
- Level scaling
- Obtaining prizes
- Classifications
- Challenges
- Missions
Each of these mechanics is intended to satisfy some of the needs generated in the dynamics, for example, the accumulation of points is a mechanic that responds to the reward dynamics.
- Components are the resources and tools used to design a specific activity. Whether it is an LMS platform or a website specially designed for the gamification process.
The dynamics are located, according to Kevin Werbach and Dan Hunter, at the top of a gamified project. Werbach understands dynamics as the hidden structure that gives coherence to the entire gamified project. The objective of the dynamics is to satisfy the intrinsic motivations of the students by connecting the dynamics and components to the gamified structure as a whole.
For the design of these dynamics, one of the predominant theories is that of Yu-Kai-Chou’s Octalysis, which establishes 8 strategies that make something motivate and engage a person. These are:
- Sense of call and epic meaning: The person acts because he believes that he is doing something great.
- Development and achievement of the desire to progress: The person acts in the face of a challenge, it is related to the natural disposition of people to want to develop skills and overcome challenges.
- Promotion of creativity and feedback on results: The person acts to express her creativity and needs to see the results of her creativity.
- Ownership and Possession: The person acts because he wants to improve and increase what he has.
- Social influence and affinity: The person acts because he is a social being who seeks social acceptance, company, comparison with others, etc.
- Scarcity and impatience: The person acts before something that is rare, elusive, exclusive, something that he has never had.
- Unpredictability and curiosity: The person acts because he does not know and wants to know what is going to happen next.
- Loss and avoid: The person acts to prevent something negative from happening.
The process of implementing a gamification strategy is simple by applying what was described earlier in this post. The main thing is to study what needs of the students we seek to satisfy, and with them create a dynamic for gamification. Once this dynamic has been identified, the next step is to establish the different mechanics that satisfy each of these needs and specify how we are going to do it (this obviously takes time). Once the dynamics and mechanics of the gamification have been determined, it remains to create the support in which it will be developed, that is, the platform. There are various options, from any LMS platform to more specific platforms that are limited to a series of mechanics such as Kahoot!, Trivinet, Socrative, Duolingo, etc.
