Gamifying the Math Classroom
By: Kriti Khare
Tags: Gamification, Education, Teaching And Learning, Mathematics, Mathematics Education

By facing the catastrophic events successfully, the teams can also earn items. I plan to have some rare items such as ‘Life saver’ which will allow the guild the team belongs to be saved in case they are unsuccessful in diverting a catastrophe, or regular items like ‘100 Food’ that would help in building homes.

Badges:

Badges are used in gamification to represent non-linear accomplishments. These could be for a scoring streak — diverting three catastrophes in a row, or displaying certain traits. For example, if a team had exhausted all 3 attempts for a set, but they persist and still decide to submit the correct answer knowing they won’t get any points, they can get a ‘Motivation’ badge.

These are some badges I found on Badgewallet.com and which are a great inspiration to me. Ladebalken means micro-projects, which is kind of what the catastrophic events and SMILE cards are.

Badges by themselves do not have any value. However, to make the game interesting and help with the jeopardy effect, I have associated some point value to each badge which will be revealed at the end of the term. Thus, there are always benefits to collecting badges.

Gold:

Gold is one of the resources that a team can win in certain categories, as shown above. At any point of the game, a guild can exchange gold for points to move up the leaderboard.

The Leaderboard:

The leaderboard in the classroom would display the top 3 teams in two areas:

Strand-wise: Strands are the broad areas in which math skills are divided. In the Alberta math curriculum, these are Numbers, Patterns and Relations, Shape and Space and Probability and Statistics. The teams that have solved the most questions for a content area, for example, Numbers, would be displayed on the leaderboard.

Specialization-wise: These are the teams that have showcased their ability in applying Math concepts to multiple areas such as landscaping, agriculture and food.

A guild leaderboard. The current winning guild forms the government. They get to decide something such as the next set of SMILE cards to other teams. When a ship runs out of water, they must do an extra activities to fix that, e.g. build a well.

Apart from the above, there would also be a board that display the number of cards completed by each team, and guild.

My role:

Teams will collect the SMILE cards in their area of interest from me. Once they complete a level for it, i.e., they have solved the cards and I am satisfied that they have met with the learning goal, they can move on to the next level. If a class is 80 minutes then at least 15 minutes of the class would be dedicated to team work, whether they can complete the SMILE cards together or keep working on the concepts that were covered in class that day. When creating the cards, I would be noting down for myself the learning objectives that each covers and would let them know, for example, “you can now apply your number sense skills to Level 2 of Agriculture”. Students are welcome to work collaboratively outside of the class as well and access the computer or their devices to look up possible solutions.

In reviewing their solutions, I am looking for the methodology that they applied as well as whether they got to the right answer. For example, there might be a team who solved a question in a way that I had not thought of before. For such a team, there would be a badge called ‘Fresh Eyes’ because they have shown me a new way to approach the problem. I would give feedback for each question and I plan to have one-on-one conferences with the teams when I am returning the set they submitted.

The SMILE cards do not have a time limit. It is in the hands of the students to do as many as they can during the course of the school year, based on the strategy that their guild has decided upon. The catastrophic events, however, work differently. They would be set up by me, once for each unit in the curriculum, and would need to be solved by the students in that week. I imagine them to be more elaborate, needing time for them to come up with a hypothesis, collect data and present their answers to the class in a creative manner. For example, towards the end of the year, an artifact could be to build a map of the planet that we have explored. For teams that would have completed most of the SMILE cards, they would have a more comprehensive picture of the world they now inhabit.

Rebalancing:

This is the hardest one to implement and think through. Here are two ideas that might work, with varying levels of complexity for implementation. If you know other ways to keep all students motivated to play the game, please let me know in the comments!

Option 1: Reshuffling per month

Every month, to ensure that the teams are well balanced and everyone is contributing to solving the puzzles and making the planet a place to live on, the teams would be reshuffled. Similar to how people can move between guilds, the reshuffling would provide this opportunity.

Using the Kagan technique, the teams (and with them, the guilds) would be put on quadrants by points earned so far: High, Med-High, Med-Low, and Low. High students should be grouped with Med-Low as often as possible. Same with Med-High and Low. The idea is that High students will be overly frustrated with someone so much lower and the Low will feel the same about the High. This would prevent one student doing all the work.

Let us consider two teams belonging to different guilds. Let’s say Suzie and Sam have 410 points while Tammy and Rod have 1000. When reshuffling the teams, I will consider both Suzie and Sam have individually 410 points and Tammy and Rod have 1000 each. To equalize the teams, I would put Suzie and Rod in one team, now with 1410 points and Tammy and Sam in the second team, also with 1410 points. Thus, after the reshuffling, the teams will be back to the same points again and can start afresh.

Disadvantages of this technique: This takes away the team-work element that I want to emphasize in the game and leaves almost every outcome to be decided at the end of the term where the students are in their final teams and guilds.

Option 2: Clawback mechanisms

As we wrap up the first unit in the class and more SMILE cards become open to the students to try out because they now have the skills to try them, competition would become more apparent. Clawback mechanism are when certain mechanics in the game are adapted according to where the teams are – for example, if a team that was at 10th position is the first one to complete the 2nd level of a set of SMILE cards, they could get bonus points to bring them back into the game or better items. Also, the exchange rate of gold can be higher for leading teams than for teams who are further down on the leaderboard.

I could also introduce a tax system where each week, a guild would have to pay certain points as taxes based on the number of points that they have. Similar to real life, there would be tax brackets that they would want to be under to not be taxed highly.

Disadvantage of this technique: I do not want students to stop themselves from trying out higher levels of SMILE cards or strategize in such a manner that they hand in everything at the end of the game, getting taxed the least over the term. Though I do not foresee this happening at the moment because the next level of SMILE cards will not be given to them unless the previous level has been solved. Thus, while they may be able to delay getting some points, they would have to hand over the cards to move forward in the game.

The Winner:

Both points and gold are associated with the individual as well as the guild. If teams are reshuffled, as explained above under Option 1, it would be based on points, not on gold. Thus, the final teams at the end of the term and the gold that each member has can affect the final outcome of the game. The guild with the maximum points at the end will gain control of the planet.

It would be a celebration of efforts by everyone.

Support from Educational Theories and Best Practices

In the article above, I explored the five educational theories that we have to think about as educators when we think of gamifying learning for our students. These are scaffolding, self-determination theory, motivation, distributed learning and retrieval practice and episodic memory. Let’s now take a look at how each of these are incorporated in my classroom.

Scaffolding

Scaffolding involves giving students hints, clues and feedback throughout the learning process. In the game environment, this is incorporated through group work and different levels of difficulty for the SMILE sets. There are multiple chances to get points for solving a set correctly. Since I am actively involved in the process of reviewing student progress, I will provide appropriate scaffolds.

Self-determination Theory

Self-determination theory says that people are motivated when they have autonomy, i.e, they feel in control fo the situation, they feel competent to complete the task at hand and are able to showcase their learning to others. The choice of SMILE cards in specialization and level give teams autonomy in exploring their interests within the game. The different levels of SMILE cards increase their competency and confidence as they can progress to the next level only after solving the prior level. Though the leaderboard only shows three teams, there would also be a board for badges for the teams. Thus, teams would be able to share their progress with the rest of the class at all time.

Motivation

Motivation can be intrinsic or extrinsic. However, both types exist together in any educational setting. The badges and points serve as extrinsic motivators because they can visible to all teams. Students might work harder to be on the leaderboard or have the most number of badges. On the other hand, having the ability to choose and then ask for the next level of SMILE cards is intrinsic motivation because it gives the teams a sense of accomplishment when they hand in their work and receive a brand new set which they are now capable of solving.

Distributed Learning and Spaced Practice and Retrieval

The students will learn the concepts little-by-little everyday. At the end of each day, they will have some time to work on their chosen SMILE set. Since the different levels cover increasing number of concepts, they would be able to refer back to what we covered in the class many chapters ago at times. The catastrophic events will likely use multiple concepts and this will allow for spaced practice as well.

Episodic Memory

Episodic memories contain information about life experiences, usually associated with a particular time or place and are typically tied to emotions. The setting of the game and the transformation of the classroom into a planet (you can bet there will be much decoration) will help students relate their adventures in exploration to concepts and remember them better. I particularly hope that the catastrophic events lead to episodic memory.