We recently had the opportunity to attend the renowned BETT 2023 on its last day. Although our visit was brief, we were eager to explore the innovations within Ed-Tech and check out the start-ups in the BETT Futures section. We were especially on the look out for incorporation of games or gamification in solutions. In this blog post, we'll share our observations and insights learned from the talks, showcases, and networking with attendees at BETT.
Personalised Learning and Learner Autonomy:
With the changing economy, the future of work, and the exodus of teachers leaving the profession, it's becoming increasingly important to promote personalised learning and greater learner independence. We can’t keep using the same model designed to prepare workers for the factory line. It is unsustainable for educators and institutions to manually design personalised experiences for every student. Moving into the future, we believe gamification can play a crucial role in facilitating tailored learning for individual students. By incorporating game mechanics and rewards systems, students can progress at their own pace and enjoy a sense of accomplishment, fostering a more autonomous learning environment.
Two-Way Feedback Channels:
Effective communication and feedback are essential for learning and improvement. It was obvious from talks and showcases at BETT that there is a need for easier and better ways to provide real-time feedback that flows both ways - from educators to students and vice versa. Gamification can help achieve this by introducing fun and interactive ways for students to give and receive feedback. For example, incorporating peer-review mechanisms within a game-based learning platform can enable students to evaluate each other's work and receive feedback from their peers, promoting open communication and collaboration. It’s all about visual facilitative prompts. Progress Tracking and Perspective:
Progress tracking is a vital aspect of education or as put by a talk held by Microsoft “the holy grail for inspectors is progress”. We need better ways to allow educators to understand if their efforts and interventions are working. After observing dozens of solutions at BETT, it highlighted the need for new ways of visualising learning progress and providing data from multiple perspectives for easy analysis. Again, we advocate how Gamification can offer innovative progress-tracking systems that offer new insights into students' learning experiences. Game design is filled with all kinds of fun ways to receive instant feedback on progress. For instance, game-based leaderboards or achievement badges to monitor student progress. Visual representation of achievements displays progress to everyone involved - students, peers, teachers, admin and boards.
Our brief visit to BETT opened our eyes to the potential of gamification in shaping the future of education. By incorporating game design elements, we can create more personalised and engaging learning experiences, encourage learner autonomy, facilitate two-way feedback, and provide new perspectives on progress tracking. PlayThru is working hard behind the scenes to make it easier to incorporate gamification into learning and support these needs. If you are interested in a tool to support your teaching and learning, sign up for PlayThru.