Gamification has been a popular trend throughout history. From the Ancient Abacus through to 21st Century video games, children and adults alike have always enjoyed playing games as a means to have fun.
As the digital landscape has developed over the past 20 years, the prevalence of digital gaming has increased. This has resulted in children growing up playing video games – and a subsequent desire to engage and be entertained by gamified activities when learning.
Video and computer games, whilst controversial to some, have contributed to many positive traits in children. Whilst playing a video game children are juggling multiple pieces of information simultaneously and using this information to solve contextual problems. When a child fails a level they keep trying, learning valuable perseverance skills. Children share their own learnings with their friends, helping others succeed. These skills can all be applied to the classroom, and can help make learning more engaging and fun for students.
Here are our Top 3 ways to use gamification in your classroom to increase student engagement and have fun at the same time:
1. Ready, Set, Go:
Time limits are a common theme in video games. A set period of time to complete a task increases engagement levels and a sense of urgency amongst participants.
All questions in Quizalize can have a custom time limit set to them, meaning teachers have the option to set up a quick-fire, lively quiz that keeps student energy levels up and is fun to participate in, or a long time limit to promote students taking their time and considering their answers. With Quizalize Teachers have the ability to experiment with varying paces for different learning styles and purposes, giving them complete autonomy over the assessments they deliver to their classes.
2. Get Competitive:
The notion of competing for a win is an engaging tactic that can be used to encourage students to engage with materials and produce their best work. Points and star systems are often used in classrooms to reward good behavior and effort, and can be an effective classroom management technique.
Leaderboards are a great way of tracking progress. Students can see their position and feel encouraged to work hard to move up the board and achieve their personal best. Quizalize quizzes can be easily and quickly set up to feed into a digital leaderboard, where students can see how they are progressing. This competitive element can be represented as a one-off leaderboard for an end-of-term test, or to track long-term progress over the course of an academic year.
3. Play Quizzes:
Quizzes are a form of retrieval practice, which is a learning science method of helping students remember and recall what they have learned. A recent study of over 200 experiments showed that quizzes are an effective way to increase retained knowledge, meaning that student learning is aided by the use of quizzes.
Quizalize is a platform that allows teachers to build (or use any of the 1 million existing) quiz resources for their students. Dynamic functions include the ability to incorporate videos, audio files, and PDFs into the quizzes, resulting in personalized resources for every student.
Gamification in the classroom can be a tool to increase student engagement and to make learning fun. Quizalize is a platform that enables teachers to implement impactful gamification in their classrooms, without compromising on academic integrity.
You can sign-up to Quizalize for FREE and be using our dynamic quizzes in your classroom in minutes. Click here to get started! We have over 1 million resources ready for you to use along with the functionality to create your own custom quizzes easily and quickly.
Try Quizalize for free now – and be sure to let us know how you use the platform to implement gamification in your classroom!
