Practical Example
For Intercultural Management, we dwelve into the different cultural dimensions of Hofstede.
An important factor is that students are frist capable of recognising what are the characteristics that fall into each dimension so they can apply it later on on real situations.
A fun way to incorporate gamification to this is to use the game template 'Correct Group'.
Correct group allows you to create stages, in which each level shows a list of words and two different options on each side. Students can drag and drop each characteristic over the picture/text where they think it belongs to.
How to use the 'Correct Group' template
- Open genial.ly.
- Click on Gamification.
- Click on 'Correct group'.
- Click on 'Use template'.
- On the sides, you have two pictures with 'concept 1' and 'concept 2'. Replace them for the pictures or images created previously that you want to use.
- Fill in up to 12 different concepts on the central area.
- Click on 'Solution' and you can fill in the template list with the correct answers. When students click on this button, they will see a pop-up with the results.
- You can add more pages, creating as many levels as you want.
- Finally, you can save it and use the 'embedded code' to import it to 'Brightspace'.
- Publish the exercise for your students!
About the teacher
José Manuel Cotilla Conceição is a Doctor in Education passionate for developing innovative resources for Education using ICT. Recently, he has published a research book exploring teachers beliefs about the use of ICT in foreign language courses through different countries.
Feel free to contact José about this case study via Teams or e-mail.
Definition of Gamification
Gamification is “the use of game mechanics and experience design to digitally engage and motivate people to achieve their goals” (Gartner, 2014).
That is an interesting way to describe it. It covers structural gamification (‘game mechanics’) and content gamification (‘experience design’) and highlights the importance of engagement and driving motivation (GrowthEngineering.co.uk, 2019).
There are two takes on this description: it takes elements from game-design and the general principles and theories which drive gameplay and applies them to other contexts and also that it can ordinarily be applied to solve problems.
Here’s a list of just some of the problems gamification can help solve:
- Learner engagement
- Your ability to complete chores and mundane tasks
- Performance at an assessment
- Organisational productivity
- Your ability to enter ‘flow’
- Knowledge retention
- Crowdsourcing
- Student retention
Why use games to teach?
Games are for fun and entertainment, right? Gamification focuses on enabling people to achieve ‘their’ goals. For the same reason, they are also a powerful educational resource. The explanation lies in our brain: When we play a game, we produce dopamine, a substance that relates to learning and memory. When we experience pleasant sensations such as solving a problem or getting a response right, we release dopamine. The interesting thing about this is that we tend to repeat any action that provides satisfaction because it is essentially a reward (Frade, 2020).
How do you achieve these goals?
Through games, students seek to obtain validation of their skills and abilities, also their acquired knowledge. It serves to build relationships and help them make independent or group decisions. These are vital criteria that must be taken into account when building up a gamification experience if we want a successful outcome.
Gamification is a strategy. It involves developing a complete ecosystem. It is not about creating a single game, but a whole experience that combines the different aspects of the gameplay:
- Levels
- Rewards
- Feedback
- Healthy competition
5-step check-list to create a successful gamification experience
- Define your goals
- Create storytelling
- Define the mechanism of play and motivation
- Find the tools and elements you will use
- It must be fun!
How to create gamification experiences with Genial.ly
Genial.ly is a free online tool designed for instructional designers, trainers and teachers.
This tool helps everyone bring content to life: Presentations, Infographics, Learning experiences, Dossiers, ePosters, CVS, Quizzes, Guides, Games, among others.
On the video attached to this article, you will be able to watch a few examples of free templates ready to use that you can incorporate in your learning experiences.
This online tool provides everything you need, with over 70 templates specifically designed to create gamifications (question and answer games, board games, escape rooms…) available to us, as well as a lot of resources to make it very simple.
Genially also allows you to add interactivity and animation to your creations in a few minutes without programming knowledge, and is a perfect support for storytelling. With interactivity, students can interact with content in an immersive way, and different animations will easily capture their attention.
In addition, Genially can be integrated with Brightspace. Therefore, resources created with Genially can be used in face-to-face, online, or mixed environments, eliminating learning barriers.
