Talk at Digital Kids Edu about engaging kids in learning using various forms of games: open ended play, game based learning and gamification By Pierre Le Lann Co General Manager and Co founder, Tribal Nova, a Houghton Mifflin Harcourt company

1. Digital Kids Educa
Sept 18, 2013
Engaging kids in learning
Game Based Learning and Gamification
in Education

2. The Goal
“I'm calling for investments in
educational technology that will help
create ... educational software that is as
compelling as the best video game.
I want you guys to be stuck on a video
game that's teaching you something
other than just blowing something up."
President Barack Obama
There is a lot of buzz these days about how games can help solve education’s problems. So it is interesting to see the
educational community and the gaming community come together.

3. I think where games can contribute the most is in engaging kids. In the past 10 years especially, games have become
very refined at engaging kids and adults alike in learning new skills whereas school has barely changed. For kids, the gap
is widening between their home life, which is filled with exciting and challenging games, and school, that is seen as
boring and demotivating.

4. PB
As a result kids’ motivation is down. Dropout rates have increased. And the effect is even bigger on boys.
In this interesting TEDtalk by Ali Carr-Chellman, we see that boys are 2 to 4 times more likely than girls to have learning
disabilities, be suspended, expelled, or be diagnosed with adhd.

5. Teaming up game designers and educational experts is a great idea, but we have a lot of sharing to do if we want to
build great educational games together. I come from the children gaming world. So by looking at this chart of learning
theories, you can tell I have quite a bit of reading to do.
Since today we are particularly interested in kids’ engagement and motivation to learn, I would like to zoom in on three.

6. Jean Piaget
Constructivism
Since I am not a learning theory expert, allow me to oversimplify. At one end of the spectrum, you have Piaget and
constructivism in which the child actively builds his own knowledge without instructions and is self motivated.

7. Jean Piaget
Constructivism
B. F . Skinner
Behaviorism
At the other end, you have Skinner, famous for his skinner box experiments and behaviorist theory in which the child
learns what he is told to learn and motivation comes essentially from external stimuli, rewards and punishment.

8. Jean Piaget
Constructivism
Benjamin Bloom
B. F . Skinner
Mastery Learning
Behaviorism
Benjamin Bloom is closer to behaviorism but introduced the notion of mastery learning. Learning broken down into
steps acquired one after another to form a personalized learning path. This approach is found in many games so I
thought it would be interesting to add it to the mix

9. Open ended play
Constructivism
Game based learning Gamification
Mastery Learning
Behaviorism
These different ways of learning and being motivated to learn correspond in my mind to three ways to use games in
education: open ended play, game based learning, and gamification

10. Open Play
Gamification
There is a common opinion that open ended play is wonderful for kids, and gamification is often seen as motivating kids
through shallow rewards and as bad. I would like to make the case that gamification done right is useful and that all
three forms of games are needed if we want to fully address school needs.

11. It is undeniable that constructivism and open play are a wonderful form of learning, whether it is inventing stories,

12. Designing clothes,

13. … or pretty much creating anything as long as it is made of pixelized cubes!
I am a big fan of constructivism and open play. There is something magical about a child being self motivated and
enjoying learning for the sheer pleasure of learning.

14. But it is probably not the ideal route if you are trying to get your kids to brush their teeth or learn multiplication tables,
which are things that are very defined and do not get kids very excited.

15. Also, open ended play games are usually more difficult to integrate because their use spans over several weeks and they
request a lot more work to manage. As a result, only a small percentage of teachers feel comfortable enough to use
them.

16. And the reality is that our school system is not montessori and relies heavily on standardized instruction and assessment.
I am not bold enough to think I can change the school system, therefore I would rather focus on using games to make it
more engaging.

17. “Fun from games arises out of
mastery. It arises out of
comprehension. It is the act of
solving puzzles that makes
games fun. With Games
learning is the drug.”
Raph Coster.
A theory of Game design
Raph Coster made a brilliant analysis of what makes games fun and Sebastian Deterding added a lot to the discussion
(see Sebastian Deterding’s deck, in references, for more details).
Before we get into more details, I would like to propose that our ideal goal should not be to create a fun experience to
motivate kids to learn, but rather to create an optimal experience of learning so learning in a school environment
becomes fun. To do this, games or gamified systems should be seen as only one piece of the puzzle along with other
elements such as adaptive leveling systems in core learning activities or teacher’s professional development to use these
new systems.

18. Game Based Learning
An exciting way to do this is through game based learning. I define this as designing a game to teach a specific subject
matter or standard.
They are easier to use in school because they can be correlated to learning objectives that are in the program. They are
also easier because we can design both the learning and the engaging components of the experience.

19. And it looks like they actually work. We just got results of our first efficiacy study on PBS Kids Play. The study shows over
40% improvement in reading vocabulary with kids who played our literacy and language development games for only 30
minutes per month over 5 months compared to the control group.

20. A lot of learning games in the app store fall in this game based learning category with more or less rigor in the
educational expertise involved in the making. The majority of these games are following the mastery learning theory
without actually knowing it. We are even seeing more and more learning games adopting the very sequential approach
of chapters and levels made popular by angry birds or cut the rope.

21. •
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Game Based Learning
Key Elements
Fun gameplay
Exciting scaffolded challenges
Well calibrated difficulty and pacing
Positive reinforcement
Feedback on progress
Surprise, uncertainty
Badges, rewards , level ups
These learning games tend to be small units and are engaging because they integrate a number of classic game design
principles. Not enough time to go through all of them but I do want to talk about 3 that are particularly relevant to
educational games.

22. First, badges and rewards are a nice way to show kids they are progressing but they are not essential in these types of
games. Well designed games are inherently engaging and poorly designed ones cannot be saved by rewards.

23. Second, we believe games are much more efficient at teaching a subject if the gameplay is inherently designed for that
subject. This game was designed specifically to teach sentence formation. Dragon Box or Fractions by Motion Math are
also perfect examples.

24. Whereas this gameplay can be used to teach colors, numbers, nouns, etc. , the gameplay is not reinforcing the learning.

25. The third key design element is to build games with adaptive leveling, which is adjusting the difficulty, ideally up or down
and in real time, based on the child’s success rate. By making sure kids constantly play at a level that is challenging for
them, we ensure optimal learning and optimal engagement. With adaptive leveling, games are also delivering on the
promise of individualized learning.

26. So we are big fans of game based learning and have developed many of these types of games. I doubt it can address all
of school needs though for the following reasons:
The higher in grades we go, the more challenging it becomes to design a game that accurately teaches the subject AND is
truly fun. ABCs are easy. Try making a fun game that teaches this grade 12 skill.

27. $
The other challenge is that creating games that truly teach is expensive. Need to involve educational experts, spend a lot
more time designing the game, test, measure results, etc. Let us assume on average it costs 15 K per game supposing
you could reuse a lot of elements. Now there are 1300 items in the common core.

28. $20 000 000
We are talking about an investment around $ 20 million if we want to develop a game for each standard. And this is to
address just math and language arts.
Schools need to cover a full k -12 curriculum. There may 200,000 kids games in the app store that claim they are
educational, but the reality is they cover only a fraction of the subjects that need to be addressed.
Whereas on the other hand there is a tremendous amount of teaching material covering every single standard, with
results backed by large efficiency studies that educational publishers invested hundreds of millions of dollars to create.
This material just has one small problem…

29. … it is not fun !

30. Gamification
Enter gamification. Gamification means building a game system or meta game around non game content, in our case
educational content.

31. >
The debate around gamification is rather intense mostly because people see gamification as a bunch of extrinsic
motivation gimmicks such as badges and rewards and the debate becomes about intrinsic vs. extrinsic motivation
psychology. And there is a lot of psychology research showing extrinsic factors having a negative impact on motivation
and quality of work.

32. +
I have a different opinion because I think extrinsic motivation is not so bad. It is pretty useful to motivate kids to do dry
things like drills, multiplication tables, etc. But more importantly because I believe that gamification done right includes
both intrinsic and extrinsic motivation factors. Also it is not always a such a clear line. Badges are extrinsic but if they
help a kid build self-confidence and get him accepted in a group, it becomes intrinsic.

33. Gamification Key Elements
Extrinsic
•
•
•
•
•
•
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Goals & real challenges
Well calibrated difficulty & pacing
Continuous progress & level ups
Positive reinforcement
Feedback on progress
Points and use of points
Badges & rewards
Surprise & uncertainty
Social status, leaderboards, reputation systems
There are a number of core game design elements that are the reasons why games are successful at engaging kids.
You can find these in pretty much all types of successful games.

34. Continuous Progress
The first is continuous progress. In school, because the grading system is broken down per test, session, subject, a student
may get an A on one test and a C on the next. It feels like he is regressing whereas in reality his overall knowledge keeps
progressing all year long. In a gamification system a simple way to motivate students is to show continuous progress
through levels or even better an XP bar always present, that constantly increases with all tasks.

35. Level ups
Also the brain is hardwired to want to level up the minute it sees a progress bar and levels.

36. Use of Points
Another key motivation factor is the use of points. Grades and scores are points but they are not motivating because
you cannot do anything with them. So it is good to reward progress with points or currency but what really matters is
what you can do with these. Whether it is buying cool fashion or creating your own places…

37. Use of Points
…or buying car parts in Umigo which is a DOE funded project we developed for increasing math proficiency in kids 6-8.
Kids use the currency to buy parts to create cars that race better depending on car parts and the type of terrains.
What will get kids excited varies a lot based on age and gender. But the use of points is even more crucial in gamifying
educational material because there is no core game so the use of points is the game.

38. Surprise
Fun and excitement also come from an element of surprise. It is important that kids are not always sure of what they will
get. In Math bingo, kids never know which bug they are going to receive. I swear I saw my kids fight over the iPad to do
multiplications just to get these rare bugs. In World of Warcraft or Wizard 101, a key driver is the loot with a small
random chance of getting rare items.

39. Goals/ challenges
Providing goals and real challenges is one of the core driver of games. Interest over time is increased by proposing
several challenges of various types to appeal to different users, mixing short, medium and long term goals, scaffolding
and requiring the use of new more advanced skills over time.

40. Feedback on progress
From training for a marathon to losing weight to financial goals, progress feedback ready to digest has a big impact on
motivation. We need to go beyond a scorecard confined in a section and push real time feedback as part of the overall
experience in the form of widgets for example (see preceding slide).

41. Rewards
Like it or not, apart from a few activities such as art, the human brain is wired to optimize and we often take into account
an outcome or rewards when deciding to do a task. Rewards can be very simple and still motivating because people
value different things. In this case, I have seen kids doing quizzes for hours to get pieces and complete a simple avatar.

42. Status /social
Status and social interactions with peers is a also a big motivation, whether competing (leaderboard), collaborating
(team missions or co farming ), showing off (social), or helping others (forum).

43. Gamification Key Elements
Intrinsic
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•
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Mastery
Meaning
Autonomy
Belonging
I have seen these extrinsic factors work with kids over and over. What I have noticed though is that in themselves they
are not sufficient to hold the child’s interest over a long period of time. And the less exciting the core game is, the shorter
the effect. Given that our core activity is pretty dry, we really need to work on intrinsic factors to hold their interest.

44. Mastery
First is the sense of pride, of feeling like you are really mastering a subject, that you are good in math or you are smart.

45. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi - Flow: the psychology of optimal experience
This is a inner feeling but we can work on many factors to nurture this sentiment such as using adaptive leveling to
ensure a flow experience, using badges selectively to reinforce self-esteem and choosing the right tone to avoid the nerd
stigma.

46. Meaning
Another game changer is when a kid cares about the game because it is meaningful to him or her.

47. Storytelling
Projectile
Trajectory
vs
This comes largely from storytelling. It is a lot more exciting to save the world or rescue the birds’ eggs from the evil pigs
than just throw a rock on a target.

48. Personal goals
But things like allowing students to set up their own goals can also make the experience much more meaningful. A 90%
score may not be motivating to certain students because they know they cannot achieve it, but setting up a 80% goal can
be.

49. Common goals
Community goals
Being part of a project bigger than ourselves can bring a lot of meaning to a task. I am sure you have seen the energy of
students washing cars to fundraise for their team (now try to get your kid to wash your car alone to see the difference).
Enrolling the teacher into setting up a common goal for the class and involving students in choosing the goal and reward
can build up a lot of motivation.

50. Real World impact
Including a element that has an impact on the real world can also make a gamification system more meaningful. In this
case, we developed a financial literacy program for a bank and kids donate points that affect how much money the bank
gives away to various charities.

51. Autonomy
Giving kids as much autonomy as possible is one of the best ways to increase their engagement. There are two important
design elements to do this.

52. Meaning
Choice
The first is choice.
Work is something a student is forced to do while play is something a student chooses to do even though they can be
very similar tasks. Math bingo is essentially an addition or multiplication work sheet but kids choose to play with it.
The more choice we can give to kids; which task they want to tackle, how they want to structure their time, etc; the
better

53. Self expression
Self expression is also extremely powerful at building a sense of autonomy. It does not have to be as extreme as we did in
Woozworld. In Woozworld, kids use points to create the entire world to their liking from schools, hospitals, clubs, and
even wedding chapels. So far, they have created 25 million places in the world.

54. Self expression
It can be as simple as decorating your space and creating wacky looking cars. Self expression varies a lot based on age
and gender.

55. Belonging
Finally, probably one of the most important intrinsic motivation factors that govern life of tweens and teens is
belonging to a group, having friends. This drives so many of the decisions they make every day.

56. So, I have a dream. What if we could make being good in school a cool thing.
I have watched kids interact in Woozworld for hours and the popular kids in Woozworld are not necessarily popular in
real life. They are super cool in Woozworld because their parents spent real dollars to get the hard currency that let them
buy all the cool things. It is actually sad how the other kids suck up to them .
So imagine if progressing in math or helping other classmates could get you the hard currency and all the cool things that
you can do with it. If it increases their cool factor, I bet this will get a lot of kids motivated.
This is also a chance to promote new positive values.

57. Currency is a great tool but badges, rewards, levels and special privileges are all extrinsic elements that can build up a
sense of belonging. In Wizard 101, kids constantly ask high level wizards to friend them because they look cool but also
because of all the powers and privileges that they have accumulated and can share with friends. They do not even start a
dialogue. The minute they spot a high level wizard in a place they ask him. I bet a lot of these high level wizards are
considered nerds in their school but in Wizard 101, they are almighty.

58. Coolness among tweens and teens is a very subtle thing to master. It is the sum of many design elements that in the end
affect how kids perceive the game and the other kids playing it. For this age group, the group dynamics have a very big
influence on making the meta game fun or lame.

59. Now there are significant challenges to making gamification work in education.
We need to create a metagame that appeals to both boys and girls, which is more and more challenging as they grow up
.
We need to make a game that keeps their interest over a long period of time, probably several years!

60. But fundamentally, our biggest challenge is that contrary to a game, the core activity is something students are forced to
do, not choose to do. Also, we are limited in how much we can modify the core activity to create an optimal learning
experience such as giving students more choice or integrating adaptive leveling for example.

61. Another fundamental difference with games is that the core element of what makes play playful is the lack of
consequences. Games are great places to try things out, whereas, in education, scores, grades have real consequences
that will alter the mindset of kids engaging in the meta games we design.

62. And finally there are mixed feelings in the teacher community about games. We need teachers to play along by allowing
students to spend time playing with the meta games ideally in rest periods such as recess or free time or otherwise at
home.
These make designing gamification systems a much bigger challenge than designing educational games.

63. What works in our favor is that kids are in school, with limited entertainment options and any sort of game will always
be more exciting than a worksheet.

64. I truly believe that if we managed to engage kids to the point of nagging their parents to spend real dollars in
Woozworld, we can engage them into doing school work. And if we engage kids into learning, then we can truly make a
difference.

65. Thank You !
Pierre Le Lann
lelann@tribalnova.com

66. References
I invite you to check out these videos and this slideshare presentation to dig deeper into this.