By Jonathan A. Bower

Entertainment vs. Education
Americans, and many others around the world, live in a highly stimulating entertainment environment. Television, video games, phone apps and a myriad of web sites offer highly engaging
entertainment experiences at any time, in just about any place. In order to compete for attention,
many educators and education software developers argue that learning experiences need to begiven the style, pace and scoring systems of games, to be “gamified,” in order to engage learners and provide effective learning experiences. Yet, research contradicts their assumption.
Humans are natural learners. The brain secretes Dopamine in its reward centers in response toa successful learning experience demonstrated by performance1. First graders successfully
reading new words and golfers who learn to hit straighter down the fairway both experience realpleasure from their achievements. They do not need animated figures to congratulate them, rapid-fire editing to keep them involved or good scores to tell them they succeeded. Performing alearned skill generated the pleasure by itself.
Even more important to learning, the gamification of learning activities actually reduces learning;
reducing the value and the pleasure that learners receive from their use. Research by Michelle
Donnelly in 20062 found that students who heard stories read out loud were 2.5 times more likely to remember their content than students who experienced them in animated interactive applications. Writing about the study, Iain Thomson noted that “pupils who use interactive software
cannot remember the stories they have just experienced because they are distracted by cartoons and sound effects.”3 Similarly, Hongpaisanwiwat and Lewis reported in 2003 that animated characters had zero or negative impact on recall depending on whether a human or animatronic voice was used4. Many other studies5 have shown the same: the more multimedia effects
are included in learning activities, the less learning takes place due to both time wasted and distraction from the learning task.
Effective instructional software implements this research by limiting animation to answers moving into position for selection by learners, and by limiting sound effects to direct positive andneutral (for errors) feedback. Students choose the backgrounds they prefer from complexthemes or simple colors depending on their ability to concentrate and their propensity for boredom. Learners focus on the content; tracking their progress through reports. Teachers can also
access these reports to provide additional feedback and direction to learners, but the primaryvalue is in informing students directly6. That is probably the only area where gamification is appropriate for learning: more learning takes place when students receive direct feedback on theirperformance than if they receive it from a third party.
In sum, well designed educational software activities provide engagement through learning rather than through entertainment, effectively motivating students to succeed.
1The Compass of Pleasure: How Our Brains Make Fatty Foods, Orgasm, Exercise, Marijuana, Generosity, Vodka, Learning, and Gambling Feel So
Good.
David J. Linden Penguin, Apr 14, 2011

2
3
4

Education 3 to 13
Iain Thomson, vnunet.com 10 Jan 2006

Attentional Effect of Animated Character. Human-computer Interaction, INTERACT ’03: IFIP TC13 International Conference. Cholyeun Hongpaisanwiwat & MichaelLewis (2003)
5Christensen & Gerber (1990), Boyce & Assad (1990), Tversky, Morrison & Betrancourt (2002), Rieber, Baylor, Ryu & Shen(2003), Large,Beheshti, Breuleux & Renaud (2003), De Jong & Bus (2004), Lowe, R.K. (2004), Sung-il Kim (2007)
6Hattie, John. Visible Learning: a Synthesis of Meta-Analyses Relating to Achievement, 2009, Pgs. 48 & 225

For more information, contact Jon Bower at 508-641-4035 or at jon@flinklearning.com.