Gamification and Its Applications in Educational Environments

In the 21st century, the level of digitalization in education is increasing rapidly due to digital developments and especially due to the pandemic that has entered our lives recently. In addition, new ways of gamification emerge in the education-teaching process. Gamification actually encompasses a more permanent target behavior beyond learning the target audience by having fun. It achieves this by stimulating various hormones in human physiology. Meanwhile, the target audience, who has fun-oriented emotions, learns the information they learned during the game much more permanently. In other words, it encodes into its long memory. It is very difficult to see the current generation away from technology, phone or tablet. One of the most important concepts of gamification is undoubtedly the pyramid. This pyramid contains components at its base, mechanisms at its middle layer, and dynamics at its top.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eGHpGbbx6T0

Dynamics: Gamification dynamics are the basic principles that take place in almost all kinds of games and make up the gamification design (Bozkurt, 2014). Components: They are the most obvious and first-known elements of the gamification process. More than one component can only be used in relation to a single gamification mechanism (Bozkurt, 2014).

So how does Online gamification take place in Educational environments?

Gamification, which was not a common topic until recent years, was put forward by Pelling in 2002. It has a wide application area and can be expressed with different definitions in every context. The definition for educational environments is to use game techniques, dynamics and game structure in educational environments in order to encourage the individual to perform the desired behaviors, increase the motivation of the individual and ensure their commitment to the environment (Çağlar and Kocadere, 2015).

Let's take a look of couple examples of gamification;

First, it is aimed to teach MS Office program with Microsoft Ribbon Hero. Users are given a series of tasks at different levels. Initially, all users were assigned the same task; In the process, the tasks are customized by taking into account the features that the user uses in the MS Office program (Kim, 2013). Each task corresponds to a certain score, and users who perform the tasks are given feedback. The extent to which the tasks are accomplished and how many points are received can be shared via Facebook. In addition, through the leaderboard, the individual has the opportunity to compare their score with other users. This application that offers a clear list of tasks for each level; gamified training with points, leaderboards and custom missions.

Another educational example of gamification is Khan Academy. Khan Academy is an online learning environment that hosts free course materials and resources worldwide, as well as gamification elements with score, badge, progress statistics of user participation in learning tasks and completion of learning tasks.

Bozkurt, A., & Genç-Kumtepe, E. (2014). Oyunlaştırma, oyun felsefesi ve eğitim: Gamification. Akademik Bilişim, 14, 147-156.

Çağlar, Ş., & Kocadere, S. A. (2015). Çevrimiçi Öğrenme Ortamlarinda Oyunlaştirma. Journal of Educational Sciences & Practices, 14(27).