Discussing the gamification of learning with professionals

During my ongoing literature review I often discover interesting facts about things I’ve never thought about. Sometimes I can connect these facts with my own observations: The result is mostly a completely new idea why things are as they are. Maybe these ideas are new to you, too. Therefore I’ll share my new science based knowledge with you!

This week: This time, I think about the positive feedback I received from professionals about my field of research.

Last week, I wrote about the experiences I made during a language proficiency test [1]. The test began with some general questions about my work and my hobbies and so I was able to present my work as a Ph.D student and my field of research to the two examiners. In other words, I presented the general concept of the „gamification of learning“–the application of game mechanics in order to increase the learner’s motivation and engagement to practice the learning content. Moreover, the gamification of learning aims at the utilization of game mechanics that demand a certain skill or human ability in order to realize a direct training effect. Surprisingly, one of the two examiners, who is a professional language trainer, asked right away, if I would think that this concept would also work in the field of language learning.

Of course, the gamification of learning could also be used in order to learn and practice a foreign language. For instance, the learners could play an adventure game and while they are progressing through the story, the game will present and demand more and more elements of the language to be learned. This could be even enhanced with the implementation of a voice recognition system in order to allow the learners to actually speak the language.

After I had completed the first part of the test and was waiting for the beginning of the second part, the other examiner approached me and agreed that the whole gamification concept would work very well in his field of work: the training of pilots. Aside from practicing in a simulator, pilots need to learn a lot of additional knowledge in order to achieve a type rating for a certain airplane. A type rating is a certification that enables a pilot to fly a certain aircraft.

During this conversation, he basically described the application of the most used game element for the purpose of increasing the motivation: the reward mechanism of computer games. Pilots could get rewarded when they achieve a certain amount of knowledge about the airplane they are training for. Subsequently, this would result in a higher motivation to continue learning.

On the one hand, I was more than happy as I spoke with my examiner about this idea as it made me realize how important and useful my work is. On the other hand, this discussion also revealed the fact that the understanding of gamification is mostly linked with the application of these reward mechanisms. They are very simple to implement and thus are already used everywhere. Receiving virtual badges or other virtual goods is often used to raise the engagement of users to use a certain system.

Although it was great to discuss the possible applications of the findings in my field of research, it also made me realize that I still have a lot of work to do in order to demonstrate the power of the gamification of learning as it can realize so much more. There are plenty of game mechanics that demand so many different skills and human abilities. As soon as these demands are identified, the game mechanics can be used in training environments in order to demand the right set of skills that is needed in a certain profession. By doing so, the knowledge gained during the utilization of the virtual training environment can directly be transferred to the real world application as both situations share similar demands.

Nevertheless, it was really refreshing to discuss the own work with professionals who are directly involved in a training process and who independently saw the benefits of my work for their fields of work.