To test the advantages and disadvantages of gamification, Leach ran two parallel sections of his Human Uses of Technology course. One was taught as a regular class, while the other section used leaderboards, badges and points and, to a lesser degree, quests. “The stages of various assignments were also described as 'quests' but this was a very superficial narrative element. Mostly, the experiment’s focus was on the crudest use of popular gamification tools,” said Leach.

In the end, the gamification group visited the online course site twice as often and spent double the amount of time as the regular class. Their blog posts were submitted earlier and they were significantly more active on the online class forum. A post-game survey revealed that 82% of the students believed that gamification was an effective motivational tool. Surprisingly, despite their higher activity on the class site, the gamified group demonstrated no improved learning outcomes in their academic performance in the course.

Leach’s research paper on the experiment concludes that “gamification can offer incentives for online activity and socializing but, on its own, may have little impact on quantifiable learning outcomes.” These results might change with alterations to badge criteria and/or how points are awarded, which might impact how students distribute their efforts.

Fortunately, gamified and gameful designs are not mutually exclusive, and combining both may cast the widest motivational net, significantly improving chances to capture hearts and minds.

A Playbor of Love

Recasting college level classes as games can be enormously rewarding and beneficial for students and instructors but, as all genuine innovation, hurdles must be cleared.

“Story, I think, is the real power of game-based learning,” said Leach, but he underscores a structural challenge to implementation when he adds that “the modular set-up of most university programs — 1.5 hour classes twice per week, students taking four or five different courses at a time — undermine developing that sense of narrative engagement in a university setting.” Can multiple courses be integrated into a single game? Can schedules be abolished to make way for more sophisticated asynchronous gameplay? Time will tell.

Leach also believes that universities could look to the K-12 system, where the emphasis is on pedagogy rather than research. “Mostly, I think university instructors have a lot to learn from K-12 teachers, where there is far more innovation in the fields of game-based learning. The lack of communication between the K-12 and post-secondary realms is a huge barrier to innovation.”

Implementing a game-based class also means an increased workload for already busy professors. Bob De Schutter, a game design professor at Miami University, writes that it can be a “long and laborious process to get it right.” However, tools like 3D Gamelab, and the benefit of tried and established models from pioneers like Lee Sheldon and Chris Haskell, will all prove helpful to reduce the time commitment for educators who want to jump into the fray.

Ultimately, it might be more accurate to frame the extra work as playbor rather than labor. “Truth of the matter is that I love doing the gameful course,” said De Schutter. “It is fun to ambush students, to bring their heroes in the conversation and to basically game-master a class, and it is just as fun for students to battle each other or slay vampire kitties. That does not necessarily make an already engaging teaching style any more engaging, but it does make your class significantly more awesome.”