Gamification Blog Book Tour: Week Five Stops and Week Four Recap

TODAY’S BLOG BOOK TOUR STOP:May 17: Slight alternation in the schedule. Today’s stop is Gamification Happenings. It is the Pinterest page for the book and all things gamification.

Also, today would be a good day to revisit some of the great posts of this week. Stop by and see the post at Designing Digitally about the book.

Check out

John Rice’s stop on the tour, I want to thank John as I included some ideas on understanding elements leading to higher learning in videogames which he outlined in a paper published a few years ago in the Journal of Technology and Teacher Education.

 And don’t forget Christy Tucker’s stop Research in Gamification of Learning and Instruction and also check out her posting Ruth Clark Claims “Games Don’t Teach” part on an interesting debate I plan to weigh in on tomorrow.
Stops for Week Five

May 14: Andrew Hughes Designing Digitally
May 15: John Rice Educational Games Research
May 16: Christy Tucker Experiencing E-Learning
May 17: Gamification Happenings at Pinerest
May 18: See my post, “Games Teach!”

Plus we have added a few new dates and stops (stay tuned) we are also having a webinar event with Dan Bliton who challenges attendees to the game “Are you smarter than Karl Kapp”. Dan will be hosting the game and conducting an interview with me on the 24th of May during BAH open webinar at 1:00 ET.


Recap of Week Four 

Week Four was an exciting week. We had many activities going on related to the tour. We had a very interesting stop with Mike Qaissaunee’s post Gamification of Learning and Instruction. Mike gave the perspective of a technology educator and someone who is not an instructional designer and explained how gamification impacts him and the difficulties associated with gamification when your teaching load is heavy. 

Koreen Olbrish’s The Shamification of Gamification  posting discussed how we should “focus on the challenge of educating the market, not vilifying a word.” She also commented on the chapter she contributed to the book.

Larry Hiner at drlarryhiner talked about the Intersection of games, learning, and organizational psychology providing an interesting and thought provoking perspective.

Catherine Lombardozzi at her Gamification Whistle Stop discussed what someone will learn when they read the book and what people mean when they talk about “gamification” and the factors that transform engaging learning into game play.

Zaid Ali Alsagoff created a post called Gamify to Amplify the Learning Experience. He talked about gamification to of personal learning and sharing and the gamification of teaching. As always, he provided great graphics and visual insights.

We also had two book reviews one by Connie Malamed at eLearn Magazine and another book review by Jennifer Neibert of Learning Solutions Magazine.

Allison Rossett mentioned Gamification in her interesting post titled My Commencement Address for the Workforce Learning Class of 2012.

And I somehow missed this before but Ruth Clark wrote a provocative piece called Why Games Don’t Teach which discusses one research article that found the game used for learning didn’t teach what it was supposed to teach. There are other studies, of course, that show that games do teach (many are cited in the book) and even serveral meta-analysis studies (studies of studies) that show games do teach.

So, right now I say it depends on the study and research design as well as game-design as to how effective the game is for achieving desired learning outcomes.

One thing that Ruth Clark did bring up that I think is important is that “we [need to] cultivate a more refined approach to categorize the features of games that best match various instructional goals.” I agree and have put such a hierarchy into chapter 8 of the book. That is where I identify types of games and which type is best for teaching which type of content. It’s a start. If you have a chance, read Ruth’s article. It is good to keep a balanced perspective when thinking about games for learning. They are not the answer to every instructional problem.