Gamifying my class - Part 1

The only really new thing I'm going to try this summer is to gamify my class. Gamification is basically making elements of your class like a game as a way to get students to spend more time with the course material and to motivate them to do things they might not otherwise have done. It is also a non-grade way of rewarding students. Plus, it makes learning fun.

Now, I should confess that I am not a gamer. I don't play Angry Birds, I don't play Words with Friends, I never played Farmville. It's not that I have anything against gaming, it is just that, on the rare occasions that I have a few spare moments, gaming is not what pops to the top of my list of things to do. I have, however, watched my son and husband and their huge devotion to games. I see other people putting a lot of energy into earning points and moving up levels. I am fairly convinced that this will motivate at least some of my students to engage in class more than they otherwise might have.

So, step one was to read up on simple ways to gamify a class. I included some of the articles I read below. I've decided to have a badge based system, where students can do three kinds of tasks to earn badges, similar to a merit badge that one might earn in the Boy Scouts. Here are the three kinds of tasks, as suggested in A Teacher's Guide to using Badges in the Classroom by Keith Sorensen:

• Specific badges - basic tasks aligned to course outcomes. I'm thinking thinks like mastering the basics of Canvas, making substantive discussion posts on 5 days during a week, adding a website review to our course resources and the like.
• Random targets - random tasks aligned to course outcomes. I'm thinking getting question #7 right on 3 quizzes in a row, finding a mystery icon that I hide somewhere in each module, etc.
• Challenging targets - really hard stuff. I'm thinking reaching 100 people with your service learning project, having a viewing of a class related movie attended by 50 people, etc.

Now, once one earns the badges, what then?   In Education Levels Up! – A noObs guide to Gamifying your Classroom , Mr. Daley suggests letting students level up, earn experience points, and earn rewards. This all sounds like a bit much to me. I'm thinking of having some basic rewards like, earn 3 badges, get a late pass, earn 10 badges, get to drop an assignment, earn every badge and your grade will  go up one grade point. Daley also suggests earning class dollars for spending on rewards. I'm also pondering that idea - let them earn points for each badge and the points can be used to buy the rewards - giving the students a bit more control.

The next thing is how to organize this. All of the articles I read recommended Class Badges. I signed up. It's pretty basic and it seems like if I went with anything more complex than adding up badges, it would be more work for me. I then checked the Canvas LTI page for something that would plug right into Canvas. I actually found a couple of options including Open Badges and BadgeStack.  I like the idea of Open Badges, as I saw a great presentation from them at the Open Education conference last fall. I'm going to check that out. I also like the idea of whatever I use hooking right up with Canvas. BadgeStack required working with their development team, not an option 2 weeks out from the start of the course.  I'm going to a pre-conference session at InstructureCon on LTI's, so I should be a pro by next week.

More later as I continue to investigate gamifying my class.