Hey Teacher Guides! Have you ever wondered if you are actually reaching your students? Are you ever worried that you sound like Charlie Brown’s teacher just droning on and on? We know that both adults and students need to have interest in a concept to actually do well. If teachers are completely irrelevant to students and there is no motivation for the students to learn the subject, why would students spend their valuable time on something that they have no interest in whatsoever? That’s why learning should be fun. The Mastery Gamification Methodology aims to balance fun and learning for students in the classroom.

When we take a look at why anyone does anything, we’re talking about motivation. Most educators know about intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. Intrinsic motivation is when the student finds motivation within themselves to complete a task or learn a concept. Extrinsic motivation is when the motivation comes from a source outside the student. Within intrinsic and extrinsic motivation there are many different types of motivation from many different sources.

Intrinsic motivation could be simply because the student enjoys what they are learning so they are motivated to learn. This is why learning should be fun! Students may enjoy the challenge of a new subject or the sense of pride it brings to accomplish something difficult. Extrinsic motivation includes things like social status or material rewards from parents or teachers. It can also be something like living up to the expectations that an important person in their life has for them or even the very traditional extrinsic motivator of grades.

Students who do well in school and adults who do well at a career will often use a combination of both intrinsic and extrinsic motivation sources. I know that most teachers are motivated to do the job we do by a deep sense of intrinsic motivation because we care about kids. Yet you would be hard pressed to find an educator who refuses their paycheck because their intrinsic motivation is sufficient to get them to stay at school 8 hours with children every day. Students are no different; they also often use a combination of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation to succeed in school. Again, this is why learning should be fun

I feel like it’s important to remind ourselves that all people, adults and students, need a combination of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation to succeed at a particular task because sometimes, as educators, we want all students to only be motivated to learn for the sake of learning. Personally, I am very fond of the subject I teach (Spanish) and I would love for every student who comes through my door to become as passionate about speaking Spanish as I am.

I want them all to work hard for that sense of pride that they will find when they can carry on a full conversation in Spanish. However, that fantasy simply isn’t realistic. We can sometimes have unrealistic expectations for the motivations that students need in order to succeed. Some teachers would prefer students to come in, sit down silently, take notes, worship at the feet of the genius educator and receive complete internal fulfillment by the learning bestowed in the classroom. That’s just not reality and that’s why learning should be fun.

I would argue that the motivations that students need to learn have changed in the past 10-20 years and there are many possible reasons for it. Perhaps it’s that family values have changed and don’t prioritize education as much. Maybe it’s overuse of technology shortening attention spans. It could be that degrees don’t count for as much as they used to so the payout from having a degree is less than it used to be. It could be many things but honestly, the way it has happened is somewhat irrelevant. The fact is that students need different motivation and different engagement than they used to which is why learning should be fun. So unless we want to turn into irrelevant robots with the voice of Charlie Brown’s teacher, we need to find different ways to motivate and engage our students.

One of the main elements that Mastery Gamification borrows from video games is the concept of making the student the hero of a story. Everybody loves stories, we love stories because they reflect reality and often give us hope for future changes or help us overcome the mundane aspects of our lives. In a video game, the player will receive, create, or customize an avatar and that avatar becomes a representation of the player in a fictional world. The hero will hear the call of adventure or receive a specific mission and they will have obstacles put in their way that they have to overcome to complete that mission. Along the way, the player will meet new friends and allies, make some enemies, and ultimately complete their mission as long as they stick with it and complete the necessary tasks.

In Mastery Gamification, students also customize their avatar and enter into a fictional world created by the teacher. This story includes an ultimate goal in their mission that students will eventually accomplish. The story includes characters, friends, and enemies as well as tasks that the students will complete. This world of a story where the students are the heroes and the hero has to defeat a big boss at the end is so much more interesting than a student who sits in class, takes notes, and passes a test. Traditional classrooms are often boring and this is why learning should be fun. The element of the interactive story helps to draw the student into this interesting, new, fictional world.

If the player is successful, they will often receive some sort of visual representation of the accomplishment. Many games give players badges or stars or some sort of trophy to commemorate the accomplishment of the task. This is both immediate feedback and a celebration of accomplishment. Once the first task has been successfully completed, the player will be able to continue on to the next task.

In Mastery Gamification, students work their way through levels that end with them defeating the boss that the teacher has created. If the student fails to beat the boss (pass the test at the minimum mastery level), they will get another chance to respawn and try again. Once the student beats the boss for that level, they receive their badge and can move on to the next level. It’s very motivating and another reason why learning should be fun. It’s important that the students get quick feedback on what they did right and wrong so that they can focus on the areas that need to be improved.

Another aspect of fun taken from video games is the concept of clans or parties. In a video game, individual players can join up and work together to compete against other groups. This both helps to build both a sense of camaraderie and motivate through healthy competition. In Mastery Gamification, these student groups become highly competitive and students encourage the people in their group to complete their necessary tasks so that their group can win. That’s why learning should be fun!

These elements of fun taken from video games speak to the various forms of motivation that students need to succeed. Like most systems, Mastery Gamification will generally start with extrinsic motivation. Yet while many classes use grades as their main form of extrinsic motivation, Mastery Gamification makes  the classroom experience interesting through an interactive, fictional story that students can buy into by customizing their avatar. Students are also motivated by the visual representation of their accomplishment in the form of badges. They can get social status among their peers when their group ranks among the top groups in the class and will sometimes even receive material rewards when I offer to buy the top two ranking groups pizza at the end of the semester.

While Mastery Gamification uses video game rules to make learning more fun and motivating, we also use video game rules to increase academic expectations. In most traditional classrooms, the level required to pass the class is 60%. Depending on your school district’s policy it may be a little more or a little less but 60% is pretty standard. In order to pass the class in a traditional classroom, the average of all the material that the teacher grades needs to be at or above 60%. This can include tests, quizzes, extra credit, homework, participation, and many other things.

Before I mastery gamified my classroom, I had some students “pass” my class without understanding the basics of my subject and I found that incredibly disheartening. My class had become a series of hoops that students learned to jump through instead of a place for actual learning. Students would routinely fail tests but then make up the difference in irrelevant extra credit or take homework answers from a friend and never actually learn. Mastery Gamification helped me raise the academic expectations in my classroom using video game rules.

In video games, the hero cannot get to the final challenge without overcoming small challenges on the way. Challenges can be fun and that’s why learning should be fun. If a player does not beat the boss in level 1, he cannot go on to level 2. The player will have to respawn and try again until they succeed. To me, this has an easy application to school work. In mastery gamification, students must meet the minimum mastery level on level 1 before they can go on to level 2.

Another way this system raises academic expectations is because it works with how our brains are wired. As teachers, we know that flashcards are often a good way to learn difficult material if the flashcards are used correctly. The correct way is to try to answer the questions on the flashcards and, if you get it right, set that card aside. If you get it wrong, keep that card in the study pile until you can get it right. See, if we just look at the cards and don’t bother to go over the difficult ones multiple times, our brain doesn’t do much to help us learn. However, if we recognize where we are messing up and practice the part we are messing up, the brain realizes that it needs to input new answers and we learn quicker.

It’s the same with the levels in a mastery gamification classroom. If we allow students to simply take a test, fail, and then move on, the brain does not realize it has to change or learn. However, if students remain on one level with one challenge over and over, the brain realizes that the material is important enough to learn and actually engages with the learning.

Another rule of video games that Mastery Gamification uses is that it’s the boss battles that are the important tasks to become eligible to continue on. In my grade book, I only grade boss battles (tests/quizzes). I don’t grade homework, I don’t give extra credit, all the learning experiences in the classroom help the student to prepare to demonstrate their learning and then when they demonstrate that learning in a boss battle, I will give them a grade.