Gamification

Gamification refers to the layering of game-like elements over learning activities, most commonly drills or quizzes based on a behaviourist pedagogical approach. Some contemporary polling services have gamified interfaces, with Kahoot! being one of the best-known.

While adding gamification elements does not fundamentally alter the underlying pedagogy, and in that sense it is a technique primarily associated with web 1.0, it may make learning activities more engaging for students, notably by introducing a competitive aspect. In work on shallow gamification, Andrew Lieberoth suggests that framing a learning activity as a game may have almost as much motivational power as introducing full game mechanics.

Gamification is distinct from gaming, where game principles are employed at a deeper level, and which is more closely associated with web 2.0. In reality, many of today’s game-like educational activities are arranged on a continuum which stretches from traditional tasks with gamification elements layered over the top, through to true games which have been repurposed for education; there is a certainly a grey area between the two ends of the continuum. For examples of online games from the gamification-gaming continuum, you might like to check out the Common Sense Education overview of The Best Educational Game Sites for Kids. Both gamification and gaming may be associated with mobile learning, the former primarily in the form of drill-based or quiz-based educational apps, the latter in the form of augmented reality (and sometimes virtual reality) games.

Common gamification elements which can easily be layered over the top of existing learning activities include:

• • badges (which can be collected by players to demonstrate achievement)
  • levels (with players progressing to higher levels once they have demonstrated competence at lower levels)
  • leaderboards (with top players able to see their positions relative to competitors)

For a good overview of these common elements, see Elliott Bristow’s Gaming in Education: Gamification? For a systematic review highlighting 23 gaming/gamification elements, see: Approaches and Game Elements Used to Tailor Digital Gamification for Learning (Hong et al., 2024). There are now a number of services which offer freely downloadable gamification icons, including freemium sites IconScout and The Noun Project; there are also numerous fully paid services which can be found through a Google search. This makes it easy for teachers to add gamification elements to learning tasks. Indeed, students could also be asked to create gamified learning tasks for each other, thereby moving their learning in a more constructivist direction.

Last update: March 2025.