September 19, 2012

No One Washes a Rented Car

Sep. 19, 2012 at 08:47 AM | By Andrew Vincent | Comment Count

So goes the colloquialism. And it makes sense. Why would you spend time and money on something in which you have no stake? The typical person would not. The premise of the phrase is that no one is willing to care for something that they do not own.

High school students view their education as a rented car. School isn’t something for them; school is an obstacle standing between them and what they want to do. Another brick in the wall, if you will.

How do you instill in students a sense of ownership of their education?

There are two pieces to this puzzle. Students need to see a clear connection between what they are doing in the short-term and a future that matters to them, and students need to have control over the “now” of their education.

That isn’t really earth-shattering information. Schools work hard to prepare kids for the future. Governments try to help focus schools on specific outcomes. Race to the Top is a strong example of this. The primary goal of Race to the Top? Encourage schools to adopt standards and assessments that prepare students to succeed in college and the workplace and to compete in the global economy.

Here’s the catch; that isn’t a student’s goal. That is the government’s goal. That is a district’s goal, or even a school’s goal. Remember that people play games because games make people happy. Part of what makes a game a game is that you are participating voluntarily, or working toward a mutually agreed upon goal.

You can do some quick testing of this idea pretty easily. Go up to a high school student and ask them the following question:

“Would you rather take classes that prepare you to succeed in college and the workplace so you can compete in the global economy, or would you rather take classes that combine what you like to do and help you turn that into a future?”

A quick survey of my officemates, putting on their high school student hats, revealed unanimous support for taking classes that combine what they like to do and using that to build a future career.

It was also mentioned, rightfully so, that the two are not necessarily mutually exclusive from a teacher’s or administrator’s perspective. But from the perspective of the student, “preparing to compete in a global economy” leads to disengagement. “Classes that combine what you like and help you turn that into a future,” leads to engagement.

Students will be more engaged if they are working toward a goal that matters to them.

And, just as important, students need to see how what they are doing now directly leads to the goals they pursue. If students do not see the connection, they will view the task ahead of them as busy work: an obstacle between where they are now and where they want to go.

If there are too many obstacles, a student will disengage. Remember, people play games for the experience (or, at least, the hope) of being successful. Too many unrelated obstacles and that experience or hope of being successful disappears. When that experience or hope disappears, people stop playing.

Gamification can help students identify, establish, and track long-term goals while relating near-term tasks to something Jane McGonigal called “growth with a purpose” in her book, Reality is Broken. This is evident in many extremely popular games, including World of Warcraft, Dragon Age 2, and the Civilizations games.

Growth with a purposes encompasses three key ideas:

Constant and consistent feedback
Short-term effectiveness
Long-term specialization

To keep a player on track towards a player-identified goal (be it improving their character, writing their story, or building a better civilization), these games relate every action towards the long term goal. They give the players the tools they need to be effective and overcome immediate obstacles while building towards a player-customized play style and end-game.

Nowhere is this more evident than the skill trees, or technology trees, of these games. In the World of Warcraft, a player chooses the kind of character they would like to play and is then presented with a choice of how they want to play that character and what that choice entails. This establishes the long-term goal for their character. Everything they do in the game after that point is centered around building their character to support that play style.

In Dragon Age II, players have a clear understanding of what their character choices entail, and what the requirements are in order to obtain the most powerful skills. Players can fill in their tree to meet their goals as they move through the game’s story. Each choice increases their short-term effectiveness in the game.

In the Civilizations games, discovers are dependent on previous accomplishments. A player’s civilization cannot stumble upon Steam Power without having researched Scientific Theory, Metallurgy, and Machinery. A player, seeing that connection, will lay the groundwork to accomplish their longer term goal. This technology tree gives the player constant and consistent feedback, showing them where they are, where they are going, and exactly what they need to do in order to arrive at their goal.

All of this can be directly applied to education and education technology. Students can discover their personal strengths and preferred learning styles deciding, essentially, how they want to “play” through high school.

When I see the skill tree from Dragon Age II I think of relating current lessons and homework to future learnings and goals, showing students that they need to earn a certain number of skill points before they can tackle the more difficult and more enlightening material.

The technology tree of Civilizations V is immensely complex, with inter-dependencies and pre-requisites throughout; a structure not unlike a course catalog. A student with the (personally set) goal of going into a particular field of study could see exactly which courses she would need to be prepared coming out of high school. Do you need to take AP Calculus for college? Well, that means that you need to take Algebra II, Geometry, Trigonometry, and Pre-Calculus. By the way, you also need to get on the honors math track, which has these requirements.

Every one of these ideas instills a sense of ownership of education within students. They aren’t following a path, they are following their path. They aren’t doing busy work, they are taking care of a pre-requisite for what they really want to be doing.

Gamification can be the framework that provides students with a clear connection between what they are doing in the short-term and their personal goals, giving them control over the “now” of their education in support of the “later.”

This post is a contribution from Andrew Vincent's blog Gamification in EdTech, a blog dedicated to exploring gamification and educational technology.