Introduction

Online Gamified Assessment strategy have been a practice of mine since 2016. This was my attempt to adapt and experiment with an out of classroom engagement strategy for flip classroom approach in which I have adapted the gamified strategy to enhance and encourage student engagement as classroom pedagogy and for alternative assessment. Both approaches appeared to go hand in hand, hence this article describes how both had complemented each other.

Since, then I had already begun online streaming, broadcasting tutorial discussions, discussion, and live assessment to students as novel ways to engagement the students. This was done at certain intervals during the semester until its frequency increased to once a fortnight. However, my attempts to experiment with Online Gamified Assessment became more frequently to almost on a weekly basis and was beginning to take shape in 2019 when news of the pandemic broke out in early 2020, causing a global interruption for educators world-wide. Emergency Remote Online Teaching became the measure for all educators to adapt to during the crisis. However as for me, the Outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic allowed a seamless transition from an Online Gamified Assessment which was a novel out of classroom strategy experiment to an Online gamified assessments.

In Crisis mode, innovation was about adapting to emergency measures and many have done so successfully and as for my practice, the seamless transition to Online gamified assessments is a form of innovation because my previous Online Gamified Assessment prior to the crisis, was 50% blended learning and was seen as a novelty. It was something that was not a necessity and was only designed to encourage engagement as well as to also to create an effective approach to track assessment progress. Now my Online gamified assessments is 100% online because everything has changed. Online classes has become mandatory and have also become a viable new classroom definition. However, despite the seamless transition from novel online experiment to a new borderless or online classroom approach, there are problems and challenges which are, internet connectivity at various student locations, student screen-time, online interactivity and much confusion about assessment approaches especially when classes are fully online. How does the gamified strategies I used for engagement and assessment prior to the crisis has now become more important and visible? This was something I kept doing and for many semesters, worth of data, It may be easy to assume that the approach bore positive results. However, my personal question to the attempts to use Online Gamified Assessment (OGA) as an essential approach to online classrooms would be; how does it help the students and manage the lecturers workload?

Innovative Aspects of the Assessment Strategy

This strategy touches on the attempts to redefine the 50% Online Gamified Assessment as means to fully adopt 100% online sessions or classes to be flexible online gamified assessments adapting gamified assessment for all affected students during the global pandemic by creating interactive opportunities and accessibility to the online rubrics.

• Learning and teaching issues being addressed

The main problem faced was internet bandwidth, taking into considerations locations of the students, the amount of information needed to be presented to the students, convenience of uploads, assessment of students’ assignment outcomes and visibility of engagement and progress. Another important element was the students’ emotional welfare. Based on the crisis, students have expressed emotional distress especially when experiencing total lockdown in their home countries or locations and were unable to experience the ambience of a physical campus environment. It does appear that students are eager to understand how their academic progressions are being tracked. It is easy for students to get lost in the midst of juggling 4 to 5 subjects during the semester especially if it involves formative assessment.

• Objective of my strategy

The objective is for the enablement of free accessibility to module content, communication, gamified assessment, and the establishment of a platform for continuous development in online interactivity with the incorporation of motivational talks and to create interests as well as a sense of ‘fun’ to allow the sessions to be as light-hearted but retaining the importance of the classroom atmosphere.

• Approaches

The first thing I did was to revise my past Online Gamified Assessment to juxtapose and identify what was different and what was needed with what is happening during the crisis. The table below presents the information.

Frameworks and Design

The chart below presents what was done to make sense of the Online gamified assessment approach.

Figure 1: Online Gamified Assessment Approach Framework

Figure 1 above shows a framework of the Online gamified assessment approach. The approach aligns with six key areas of instructional design framework as outlined by the 5 areas of the ADDIE model. The ADDIE model is an iterative process that allows each section of the teaching and learning approach to be consistently be analysed and assessed. Changes are frequently made after every implementation is evaluated. This allows for consistent and up to date problem solving process when dealing with urgent needs in classroom instruction (Kathryn, Hess, & Greer, 2016). Each section of the OGA approach framework (figure 1) as aligned with the ADDIE model is explained in the table below:

Table 2: Online gamified assessment as aligned with the ADDIE Instructional design Model

The next section explains how the pedagogical approach was implemented for my online classes. Table 2 above, presents five key sections and out of the five, the third section which is the section on implementation, aligned with the Educator and students OGA category is highlighted as the pedagogical framework illustrated by the chart below.

Figure 2: Online Gamified Assessment Pedagogical Framework

Figure 2 above shows the approach used to deliver the module online as a classroom broadcast. The center of the framework is a cyclical process which presents how classroom feedback, interaction, review and scoring works hand in hand as an online interactive component of the pedagogy. The Online lecture and broadcast summary present the start and ending of the session. This pattern of delivery is repeated through out the semester on a weekly basis according to class schedule. The main goal of every session is to obtain active response from the students during and after the reviews. The cyclical component has become the most active component, increasing the online engagement between the lecturer and student during all the sessions. The results of this have shown:

1. Students desire a visual connection as visual evidences to the progression of the module during the semester and during the sessions
2. Students seem to enjoy interacting with the broadcast as they would be able to constantly view the lecturer at all times and gauge the lecturer’s response.
3. Students seem to understand their progress better when gamified scoring and progress were presented visually during the live sessions.
4. Students seem to prefer live reviews of their google site e-portfolio during the live sessions and responds actively when their e-portfolios was visually presented.

ONLINE ASSESSMENT

Gamified Online Assessment Live-Stream (GOALS):The entire pedagogical approach has a strong relevance to the academic achievement for the students as the students have expressed concern on scoring. The impact of the crisis has caused other concerns and most notably, the way assessment was conducted online. Apart from scoring points, obtaining XPs (experience points), ranking up and obtaining badges, students needed to know if their attempts to fulfil their assignments and projects were taken seriously and were scrutinized. Hence the attempts to broadcast the review of the e-portfolio live online.

The gamified approach to assessment has direct connection to the marks the students would obtain. This assured the students that their efforts would not go un-noticed as far as creativity is concerned, it was explained to the students that they needed to invest to obtain more scores. The more their invest creatively into their e-portfolio which also acts as their ‘online journal’ the better their returns. This means ranking up and opportunities to obtain free reward points which would be added directly into their final marks as an incentive.  Gamified Online Assessment Live-Stream (GOALS) utilizes live input to leader board and analytics system. Refer to the chart below:

Figure 3: Live input to self-ranking leader board and analytics framework

Gamifying Assessment using XP Points

Marks as guided by the weightage in the module may be assumed as percentage of scores. However, the conversion to points levels the playing field when it comes to the combination of alternative and additional points awards which also provides opportunities for ranking not based only of the actual marks or scores but also based on scholarly activities and expected behavioural outcomes. Arbitrary points other than actual converted weighted scores are added to a cumulative points pool or column and these points are called experience points or XP (Experience Points). XPs are commonly used in game environments particularly fantasy role playing games, in which the experiences of an individual throughout a duration of time is rewarded. This paved the way for ranking and providing opportunities for rewards. Samples of assessment and analytic sheets are show as figures with the names of students greyed out to preserve anonymity.

Student Live Rubric using Google sheet (sample)

Figure 4: Student Live Rubrics

Figure 08 shows the student live rubric in which the XP points is the result of converting the weighted score or marks. The scores and points here will be captured and automatically updated at the live assessment input sheet.

Figure 5: Live Assessment Input Sheet

Figure 5 above shows the input sheet section where it captures the weighted scores. The converted XP points are calculated the at the XP conversion tabs (hidden) in the same Google sheet workbook. Workbook. The input sheet above also includes the reward points generated by the cumulative pool of XP points in the leader board (Figure 8) and is added to the input sheet as an additional column so it would self-updating.  Figure 6 below shows a sample of the conversion.

Figure 6: Score to XP Points conversion

Figure 7: XP Bucket Sheet

Figure 7 above shows the XP Bucket sheet which is linked to the Live Input Sheet and the Leader board. These XP inputs is arbitrary and based on a reward system as well as not the result of conversion from weightage scores. The awarding of XP Points resembles that of rewards after achieving quests in a game environment. The familiarity of the gaming environment seems to resonate with most students today due to the advent of immersive gaming environments by popular and latest role-playing or multiplayer games being published frequently.

called XP Bucket. The XP Bucket is where the lecturer has the complete autonomy to award any amount of XP reward for the student based on their extent of creative investment and individually motivated initiative and various other related CTS module participatory online activities at the ranking leaderboard.

Figure 8: Self – Updating Ranking Leaderboard

Figure 8 above shows the self- ranking leader board which includes the XP Bucket column. This leader board is published, and students were able to follow their achievement progress during the 14-week semester. The cumulative XP points and averaged XP points generates the reward points for the students which could be added to the main assessment scores which contain the actual weightage as shown in figure 5.

Based on the Online gamified assessment Pedagogical framework in figure 2, the assessment scoring takes place live and during the broadcast. These google sheets was used and students were able to watch how the assessment was carried out. Overall, there were no objections to how the assessment was done in the live mode. Explanations to how the reward system works were also guided by a specific rubric as reference to the assessor involved. Refer to the figure below.

Figure 9: XP Reward Rubric Reference

As far as the leader board ranking is concerned, each rank adds a sense of excitement to the students’ level of achievement. The explanations of each rank is shown in figure 10. As for an overall analytic of the students’ progress, this is shown as a self-updating chart to indicate their standings during the semester when their reviews and inputs in their live rubrics were done live or otherwise. Refer to figure 11 for the sample of the overall analytic chart called the progress chart.

Figure 10: Rank Definitions

Figure 11: Progress Chart

In summary, it appeared that during the lockdown period and when this module was to be done completely online, students were dependent on not only visibility through online video chats but also being able to visibly identify their progress as inputs were done during every session. This created opportunities to further experiment with gamified live assessment using none other than google sheets as the benefits of this platform was its flexibility in publishing and creating self-updating components which was not new area to explore as many educators are benefitting from its functions but may be more relevant in many possible gamification approaches to assessment and evaluations.

Student Involvement & Learner Engagement

Cognitive engagement

The live live sessions sessions for this module emphasizes on interactivity and discussion. The sense of discussion in this case when fully online appeared to have greatly depended on the lecturer’s effort or attempts to explain, describe and enquire about relevant subject matter either as response to the students’ posts in the e-portfolio, issues raised by the students and thought provoking issues as an extended discussion which would be related to the lesson.

Affective and Behavioural engagement

It was found that using this approach, students appeared to have responded positively to the live sessions. Using gaming terminologies and the popular live-streaming platform called Facebook Live and Twitch TV, which was strongly associated to live gaming streams online, students appeared to have expressed a great deal of interest in subscribing to the lecturer’s Twitch channel apart from being part of the FB Live group. Several students were also avid streamers themselves. The intention was balancing the academic approach of the lesson by using novel ways to engage with the students and in this case by using a gaming environment. Judging from the consistently of online class participation, it appeared that at least 80% of the students have kept to the online class schedule and have eagerly awaited to make enquiries during the stream.

As an added approach, students desired direct access to the rubrics so they could engage in self-scoring. Self scoring provides opportunities to self evaluate their overall progress as they would be able to view the leaderboard and progress chart from time to time in the midst of juggling other tasks and assignments from other subjects. Below is the video guides I created for the students in my class.

In Summary

The students have responded positively to this measure and have had lots of opportunities to track their progressions and also their assessment. You may be asking as to when do I finalize their scores. The answer is towards the end. However as the main assessor, it would be imperative that we include our briefings about assessor’s prerogative to score adjustments throughout the semester during the introduction to the subject during the first week. I have realized that this method have provided much flexibility of time to both students and lecturers to update scoring and marks especially when coping with large classes. I was singlehandedly felicitating a class with 4 foundation programmes numbering about 100 plus students. My co-facilitator was handling about 100 students. We used this approach successfully with 90% teaching evaluation scores! Free points and rewards for future approaches using the Online Gamified Assessment will include sponsored gifts and vouchers in the near future. Watch this space for updates.

Jane McGonigal, game designer and author of the acclaimed book, ‘Reality is Broken’ hints that we are part of a larger simulation which needs use to constantly go on various quests! In compared to real life terminology, why not use gaming terms! Could it be because I played too many games, or could this be a possibility that I have managed to connect the games that I know and experience to real life? The answer is no. I have don’t just connect games to real life. I enhance my life with games. According to McGonigal, reality can’t offer what games can (McGonigal, 2011). Games provide that simulated experience where self-achievement is a form self-actualized understanding of what we could do. It means, no matter what your abilities, intelligence or skills are, they matter and it is possible to achieve great success in life.

Extracted from my full article at: https://kreatifbeats.com/2019/03/22/read-this-and-level-up/

Recommended Book Reference:

McGonigal, J. (2011). Reality is Broken. New York. New York: The Penguin Press.

Last year’s final CTX videos (final submissions) this is based on their research about James Thurber’s short modern fable: ‘The Rabbits who caused all the Trouble’. Read the full text here:

Click to access The%20Rabbits%20Who%20caused%20All%20the%20Trouble.pdf

The videos revealed how this story is told through various contextual interpretations. The research about James Thurber’s modern fable reveals society’s behaviour towards prejudice, blame, fear, conflict, persecution and etc. The students’ tasks were to explore this fable’s story from different perspectives and to re-interpret these through storytelling. Check out the playlist below and enjoy! Feel free to comment!

Real Solids! How do we know?

From milk to solid food. In most educational settings, students can be seen as babies and children wanting more lactose in their system. As babies grow up, they need certain nutrients to develop their mental and physical well-being. As they say, nothing beats mother’s milk! That’s very true. How true it is that all the formula milk and designer nutrition couldn’t compete with natural nutrition from the mother. However, all other supplementary foods would also assists greatly in children’s growth.

As educators in this creative environment, students are like babies and children. In a country as young as ours and rapidly developing, young people still need to be nurtured and fed with such nutrition. Knowledge is one all in one super-nutrition that anyone couldn’t deny. It doesn’t matter which industry or field, knowledge in these areas is beneficial to all walks of life. What does students want to achieve? That question has always been answered in the classroom when students decided to undertake a challenge.

When lecturers answer their questions, they would be giving the students ideas and solutions about the problems faced. Teachers and lecturers have not only answered questions but also providing students with the knowledge which was the requirement of the course or rather the text or website address which was supposed to be beneficial to the students. The question is, have the student benefited from that? Did they learn anything?

‘Sir, did I do that correctly?’ asked a design student.

That question refers to the final sketch of a particular design solution. Would this question mean that this student has no confidence about his/her design solution or would it mean that this student does not know how to do it? How would we interpret that question? I have encountered this situation numerous times and I found out only to my delight, that these students were actually only nervous. It’s like a little bird which learning to fly.

It’s not like they couldn’t fathom the scope of the creative brief! What I have done is to assure them that, besides fulfilling client requirements, they should be certain about their ability to solve the design problem. Therefore, ‘What do you think?’ would it solve that problem? That would be the next course of action between the uncertain student and me. I did that because, it is safe to assume that they have the milk and the nutrition which they need. Now its time to eat meat. This is not in any way insulting vegetarians but what I meant is that they should go for solids.

The creative industry is expanding and developing simultaneously with technology. Therefore, we see much advancement and emergence of new design solutions and statements. This is visible through exhibitions, latest campaigns and design conferences as well as conventions. Sometimes it is necessary to allow these students to even teach a thing or two about the new things that is in the market. Students are supposed to be our channel for education and not us. They are the vital source of information, which I personally feel is precious.

Apart from what I can acquire, I wonder sometimes, how much do they know? We can’t possible say that they are students therefore, they should be any lesser than us. So, they are nervous. The problem with design students in my first observation is that they are hesitant and not that they couldn’t think.

That fact of the matter is, how do they think? The journey of discovery into what and how they think has only just begun. Therefore, If these students deserve solids; then, how do we show them how to get solids? Solids here would be the crutch, for which they would depend on in order to see their solutions implemented or presented. Where are these solids? Where do we get them? How do we as educators open that door for them to get the right knowledge protein and solids? Are they synthetic or original? Where does solids stand when milk isn’t involved?

I‘d be more concerned if none of the students asks us the questions above! Because if so, then whether or not they are thinking is irrelevant. It would be a whole other topic! So in then end the evidences of real thought comes from questions and these are evidences of eating solids! We may have directly or indirectly shown them the way to solids but what have we done to record such an achievement ourselves. It is possible that we ourselves as educators have begun savouring a new form of diet!

Latest update, in an unprecedented move, a gamification workshop using Classcraft was conducted through the support of E-Learning academy and Intellect department of Taylor’s University Lakeside campus. It was for the teaching staff at Taylor’s University for the purpose of introducing gamified LMS platforms for the classroom and It was a great session! We discussed aspects of gamified elements in a lesson and how its done. This was delivered for the first time and for cross-disciplined group of educators. There were lecturers from engineering, business, medical, design and hospitality schools! Classcraft LMS was actively used to manage this session and rewarded the teams for the gamified micro-teaching sessions! We might have a few serious users to collect more data in the near future. It was a great start for us and great fun! Still in the developments stages, Classcraft has been really supportive of our endeavours to research and study this new gamification movement in the higher learning institution! It won’t be easy but if we put on our role-playing hat, anything is possible!

Recently I have had the opportunity to speak to Stephanie Carmicheal who helms the classcraft ambassador programme. Ambassadors of this programme represents educators around the world who are using and promoting classcraft in their respective countries.

Since I was interested in taking the classcraft tool to the next level, I have applied for the ambassador programme and after an awesome interview/chat session with Stephanie, who is equally an awesome person; I was accepted! I am so delighted with the kind support from the Classcraft team for my upcoming and future ventures in using this awesome gamified tool. Being currently involved in pedagogical research and exploring the use of gamification elements in the multi-disciplinary setting, this could not have come at a better time!

Classcraft brings the world of role-playing games into the classroom. It doesn’t change the content or the how the subject is taught. But it just a vehicle to shape and change the student’s approach towards the subject (any subject) by shaping their behaviour through levelling up, interactivity, cooperative learning, rewards and the sense of fun!

The challenge now is to redefine how blended learning with the inclusion of gamified mechanics of classcraft in complement with the university LMS (learning management system) can motivate and reinforce the university students’ goals and objectives in learning. Capturing how and what works is what matters here in order to identify the best approaches in gamified pedagogies.  Some will resist because chances are they aren’t the gaming type. But that is what they have concluded because they have separated and so they think that games and teaching are two separate elements. There could be a different perception of gaming among other educators especially in the field of science.

Multi-displinary

The thing is, classcraft isn’t converting math and science into games. But classcraft can makes science and math a lot more fun! the word fun doesn’t necessarily mean that making teaching fun is confined to the elementry and pre-school level. But also at the tertiary level, preserving the youthfulness of experiential learning. As experiential learning in science and math has embedded within their teaching and learning methods, a great deal of experiential projects and experiential classrooms; classcraft presents another option to add to the interest and taste for the world of fantasy adventure. And why not try something new! Observe the students analogize themselves and watch their avatars develop as they achieve their learning objectives.

So if you are an educator or a teacher and you would want to explore classcraft for your class, feel free to contact me. My contact information is on my blog. 🙂

 

 

 

Try this!  Amazing!