Week 9

Essential Question: What are the elements of story and game mechanics? Which might be useful in your class and how might you use them?

Michael Matera explains each of the following game mechanics in chapter seven of Explore life a Pirate (2015, pp. 81-138):
  • Experience points
  • Levels
  • Leaderboards
  • Guilds
  • Onboarding
  • Achievement
  • Power Ups
  • Quests
  • Items
  • Skills
  • Currency
  • Cascading Information Theory
  • Micro-Challenges and Mini-Games
  • Life Jackets
  • Player vs Player (PvP)
  • Communal Discovery
  • Time Events
  • Punishment
  • Easter Eggs
  • Trade
  • Farming
  • Special Challenge
After reading this book and understanding how Matera employs gamification in his classroom, I could see how each of these game mechanics could be useful in my classroom. However, the idea of using all of these right away is overwhelming. With that being said, Matera notes at the beginning of the chapter that this is an extensive list so we have options and ideas as teachers, but it is likely that our gamified courses will only include two or three to begin with.

I plan to use nine of the game mechanics in the GooseChase scavenger hunt I am creating as the project for this course. Onboarding will be crucial to get students and families involved. I will have to find a way to get everyone excited to participate and provide easy access to the rules. Families will be encouraged to work together as a team (guilds) and they will be competing against other families (player vs. player). The game is set up so that new missions (quests) are unlocked each day (time events) to keep the teams on their toes and the excitement level high! Finally, I will use achievement and punishment to inspire creativity and enthusiasm. Teams can earn bonus points or lose points based on the level of submissions they turn in for each mission. Essentially the points earned are the teams experience points and they can watch themselves climb up the leaderboard as they earn more points.

Overall, I am excited to utilize many of Matera’s game mechanics in my classroom. I love that GooseChase allows me to do so whether we are in or out of the classroom since we still do not know what next year will look like.

Resource:
Matera, M. (2015). Explore Like A Pirate: Gamification and Game-Inspired Course Design to Engage, Enrich, and Elevate Your Learners. San Diego, CA, CA: Dave Burgess Consulting.

Comments

  1. AnonymousJuly 13, 2020 at 5:39 PM

    Okay. Nice description and discussion.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Coby HaasJuly 20, 2020 at 1:39 PM

    When I implemented Classcraft in my classroom, it had aspects of almost all of these, but I introduced them slowly and not all at once. Like you said the Onboarding component was huge, but I was lucky that Classcraft had a video series to help with those explanations for me, the students, and parents.

    ReplyDelete

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