Last week I put together a lesson plan using a pedagogy that I occasionally use, gamification. Gamification is a pedagogy that uses games to help teach different concepts. I took it a step further went with video games. I am a gamer (when I have time). I love strategy games. I decided to use the game Civilization VI as a way to discuss war mobilization and strategy in my World History class. I had never implemented anything like this and thought that it could be a fun experiment. In my first lesson, I gave an overview of what I wanted to do. For my revised lesson I wanted to go deeper into research on this topic. It was then that I really started to get into some research about gamification and its impacts on social studies education. What I really wanted to find out was how the strategy impacts students as far as achievement.
In one of the papers they discussed how the use of videogames in social studies classrooms can help students relate more to the content because they are simulated into that situation (Guamán et. al, 2019). The other paper discussed how they ran studies with students using gamification. They determined that the students using gamification, rather than traditional means, performed better on tests, and had increased collaborative skills (Korkmaz & Özturk, 2020). I also particularly liked a video that I found on YouTube that I believe shows this strategy in practice.
After reading these articles and other research, I feel much more confident implementing this tactic into my classroom. The articles made me much more confident that this strategy is not only more enjoyable, it is more effective. If I can find something that does both of those for my students, I will always do it.
References:
Guamán Gómez, V. J., Daquilema Cuásquer, B. A., & Espinoza Guamán, E. E. (2019). El pensamiento computacional en el ámbito educativo.Sociedad & Tecnología , 2(1), 59-67.
KORKMAZ, Ö., & ÖZTÜRK, Ç. (2020). The Effect of Gamification Activities on Students’ Academic Achievements in Social Studies Course, Attitudes towards the Course and Cooperative Learning Skills. Participatory Educational Research, 7(1), 1-15. https://doi.org/10.17275/per.20.1.7.1
MLTI. (2021, November 23). Teaching world history through gaming. [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T1d0Ji6uJTs
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