Introduction
'Sir, can we do a Kahoot?' 'Miss, can we have a fun lesson today?'
I’m sure these phrases, or others like them, are something we have all heard. ‘Can revision be fun?’ is a question that I have continued to explore and refine over my years of teaching, taking inspiration from my own gaming interests. This initially took the form of an end-of-year quiz for my GCSE class before they went on study leave during my NQT (now ECT) year. This quiz incorporated some of my favourite elements of pub quizzes and went down extremely well with the class, with one pupil staying at the end to say how inspiring he had found it.
Game-Based Learning vs Gamification
So, what is the difference between game-based learning and gamification? Game-based learning is where an existing game is used to teach specific learning objectives, such as using Minecraft to allow pupils to build atomic models to demonstrate their understanding of a molecular concept. Gamification, however, is where you incorporate gaming elements into normal activities. This can take the form of points, leaderboards and rewards and is frequently seen in popular apps such as Duolingo. These two approaches are summarised in Table 1.
