Gamifying learning is all the rage these days, especially when it comes to ed-tech platforms. But the effect that approach has on learning can range significantly, experts say.
Some products hook students with authentic, fun, highly interactive embedded games in which kids are also learning key skills.
Others simply have students answer math or reading questions to move around a digital game board or through a virtual landscape. They are not highly interactive or as fun as the others.
The technical term for that latter approach? “Chocolate covered broccoli,” noted Richard Culatta, the CEO of the International Society for Technology in Education and ASCD.
“I often roll my eyes at gamified learning,” Culatta said. “There are a lot of attempts to gamify education. And usually, those attempts just add irrelevant game elements to something that isn’t really fun in the way a game is.”
Some ed-tech providers, however, have figured out how to help students master key skills through game play, he said.
A prominent example for middle and high schoolers: A partnership between Prodigy Learning and Minecraft that offers students the opportunity to earn industry-recognized credentials while playing one of the most popular digital games.
Students can use Minecraft Education—which employs the sandbox building game—to get credentials in cybersecurity, coding, and AI. Students who participate in the coding pathway can earn citations for their fluency in Java and Python, two in-demand coding languages. (Nonprofit organizations, such as Code.org, also offer teachers and students low cost or free options to help students learn key computer science skills.)
Students can explore cybersecurity in Minecraft by studying topics like digital citizenship, networking, authentication, backups, and cryptography. Students take a capstone assessment to show their knowledge. Prodigy, a game-based learning company, recently opened up an AI pathway that teaches students about topics such as algorithms, coding in AI, how AI is used in the real world, and AI ethics.
Coding in Minecraft has statewide contracts in Alaska, North Carolina, and Washington state, as well with individual school districts. In Washington state, all districts have access to the program and can decide whether and how to use it. (Georgia took a similar approach to a game-based assessment it rolled out several years ago.)
Schools are trying to help students get industry credentials sooner
The opportunity to earn coding credentials is a big one for districts in the Evergreen State, particularly those that serve isolated communities, said Chris Reykdal, Washington state’s superintendent of public instruction.
“We are facing a labor shortage here that’s going to persist for a couple of decades,” Reykdal said. “We’re trying to figure out ... how do we get [kids] access to credentials sooner, in case their choice is to get to the labor market sooner?”
Another big part of the appeal: These programs can be implemented even by teachers who don’t have a robust background in computer science, Reykdal added.
“In our rural communities, we think this is the best way for them to plug something like this into their schedule and actually offer it, because they don’t need a full-blown computer science certified teacher,” he said.
And Reykdal appreciates that the coding and other computer science skills are imparted through a game many kids play on their own time.
“The platform itself is just very unique. If you ask students to sit in their first computer science course, they learn basics” that can feel very abstract, Reykdal said. “When you say ‘you’ve been playing this game for 10 years of your life, how would you like to [use it to] create code? The engagement level is totally different.”
