User:Mkretzsch/Gamification

Article Draft
A notice at the top of the page indicates that the article "is written like a personal reflection, personal essay, or argumentative essay", and in the Talk page there are several detailed comments about how some of the language is in fact overly academic. I intend to work on pieces of the article to improve the "encyclopedic voice" and potentially redevelop certain sections according to newly published articles or research findings.

Education and training
Main article: Gamification of learning

EDITED

Gamification in the context of education and training is of particular interest because it offers a variety of benefits associated with learning outcomes and retention. Using video-game inspired elements like leaderboards and badges has been shown to be effective in engaging large groups and providing objectives for students to achieve outside of traditional norms like grades or verbal feedback. Online learning platforms such as Khan Academy and even physical schools like New York City Department of Education's Quest to Learn use gamification to motivate students to complete mission-based units and master concepts. There is also an increasing interest in the use of gamification in health sciences and education as an engaging information delivery tool and in order to add variety to revision.

(New paragraph) With increased access to one-to-one student devices, and accelerated by pressure from the COVID-19 pandemic, many teachers from primary to post-secondary settings have introduced live, online quiz-show style games into their lessons. Among the most popular are Blooket, Gimkit, Kahoot, and Quizizz, which each allow a teacher to create questions for students to answer after connecting to the game using a code on their device.

Gamification has also been used to promote learning outside of schools. In August 2009, Gbanga launched a game for the Zurich Zoo where participants learned about endangered species by collecting animals in mixed reality. Companies seeking to train their customers to use their product effectively can showcase features of their products with interactive games like Microsoft's Ribbon Hero 2.

A wide range of employers including the United States Armed Forces, Unilever, and SAP currently use gamified training modules to educate their employees and motivate them to apply what they learned in trainings to their job. According to a study conducted by Badgeville, 78% of workers are utilizing games-based motivation at work and nearly 91% say these systems improve their work experience by increasing engagement, awareness and productivity. In the form of occupational safety training, technology can provide realistic and effective simulations of real-life experiences, making safety training less passive and more engaging, more flexible in terms of time management and a cost-effective alternative to practice.

Original

Education and training are areas where there has been interest in gamification. Gamification has been attracting attention in the context of education and training as it offers variety of benefits associated with learning outcomes. Helms et al. developed a taxonomy of educational game elements based on eight broad categories and 26 unique game elements. The authors linked each game element to positive and negative educational outcomes. Microsoft released the game Ribbon Hero 2 as an add-on to their Office productivity suite to help train people to use it effectively. This project was described by Microsoft as one of the most popular projects its Office Labs division ever released. The New York City Department of Education with funding from the MacArthur Foundation and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has set up a school called Quest to Learn Center RD around game-based learning, seeking to make education more engaging and relevant to modern children. SAP has used games to educate their employees on sustainability. The US military and Unilever have also used gamification in their training. The Khan Academy is an example of the use of gamification techniques in online education. In August 2009, Gbanga launched the educational location-based game Gbanga Zooh for Zurich Zoo that asked participants to actively save endangered animals and physically bring them back to a zoo. Players maintained virtual habitats across the Canton of Zurich to attract and collect endangered species of animals. There is also an increasing interest in the use of gamification in health sciences and education, where interactive polling, adventure games and other modes can be employed to enhance engagement and interactivity with the course content. In 2016, Souza et al. gamified a 100-student face-to-face introductory software engineering course in Federal University of Minas Gerais, in Brazil, by introducing badges and leaderboards to the course.

Gamification is used in corporate training to motivate employees to apply what they learned in the training to their job, theoretically this should improve performance. According to a study conducted by Badgeville, 78% of workers are utilizing games-based motivation at work and nearly 91% say these systems improve their work experience by increasing engagement, awareness and productivity.

Recently, gamification is emerging as a new form of occupational safety training. Thanks to technology, it can provide realistic and effective simulations of real-life experiences, making safety training less passive and more engaging, more flexible in terms of time management and a cost-effective alternative to practice.