The Effects Of Gamification And Motivation On Students

Are we underestimating the importance of creativity? Many times children are not encouraged at home to be creative, either because their parents restrict their ideas, fill their decisions with pessimism, or simply do not pay attention to this matter. However, creativity is a skill that makes the human being flexible and resourceful as well as helping them see problems differently and identify solutions more easily. Many times education will directly contradict creativity. It destroys the innovation of ideas, and stifles the imagination, while claiming it is “teaching.” Sometimes entering a classroom becomes the closest thing to entering a time machine since our teaching methods differ very little from those of ancient Rome over 2000 years ago. In Ted Talk “How Schools Kills Creativity” by Ken Robinson and the article “Let Teenagers Try Adulthood” by Leon Botstein, two different opinions about the current educational system are presented. While Robinson believes that the schooling system should work to promote creativity, Botstein says that the concept of a high and middle school is useless and should be abolished. However they both agree on reform. As a parent, I have always been concerned about my daughters’ education, and have always believed, like Robinson and Botstein, that our educational system needs a change.

2. Jeng, YC, Hsu, SL, Xie, J, Lin, R & Huang, CC 2010, 'The Influence of creative-thinking teaching on learning effectiveness', Advanced Management Science (ICAMS), vol.3, no.1, pp.33,38.

Ken Robinson is a university professor who challenges the way we are educating our children. He uses passion and humor to emphasize the importance of creativity and the need for a learning revolution. From Ken’s personal experiences, he has concluded professors tend to only live from their heads, and “slightly more to one side”. Having these professors responsible to teach us what is right and wrong is no dought steering new generations views on what we should value. Creativity is becoming stigmatized, causing individuals to ignore many career paths and conform to our set standards. He states, “we don’t grow into creativity, we grow out of it. Or rather we get educated out of it”. There are so many more types of intelligence, however we categorize one above all. Potential talent is being wasted.

Gamification is the use of game elements in non-game contexts on the purpose of making the object entertained. (Deterding et al., 2011) Gamification in education can be interpreted as the notion of presenting learning materials and designing pedagogy by integrating game mechanics. It is believed that without the desire of learning, learners will lose passion for pursue knowledge. As a result, the features of gaming, competition and motivation are the reasons that the integration of gamification has been increasingly placed emphasis. Yet, there are a few researches in terms of the efficiency and learning outcome of gamification in education.

During this session we examined the different stages of teacher development and the different types of teachers we may be. I reflected on the fact that to a large degree, we as student teachers are expected to ‘play the game’, deliver the curriculum and are, in many cases, not encouraged to develop our creativity in the classroom. As a reflective practitioner, I must acknowledge that I have felt stifled by this approach but have found myself delivering the curriculum by the dictates of whichever placement I have been involved. Some subjects offer more scope for creativity, science, art, history, music and these are the subjects in which I have felt there has been more flexibility for a more creative approach. The lesson

The beauty of creativity is that it is abstract, yet ubiquitous: in art, music or how one decides to compose an essay. However, creativity has recently been declining among the human population. According to an article, named, “The Creativity Crisis,” by Newsweek.com in July 2010, authors, Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman, state, “the Torrance Test … indicates that the public’s “creativity quotient” has steadily crept downward since 1990” (Prompt 1). Bronson and Merryman report that the test, which evaluates one’s creativity, had been dispensed to myriads of people across the globe, and have concluded that creativity has been slowly diminishing. Kyung Hee Kim, professor at the College of William and Mary, also comments that this is most prevalent and grave among students from kindergarten through sixth grade (Prompt 1). Consequently, society, or in this case, the world fears that current students and future generations will not be nourished with the creativity required to thrive as individuals, affecting the world as a whole. Ultimately, this poses the question whether a creative thinking class, which solely focuses on the education of creativity, should be taught in the school. This school should impose a creative thinking class, due to the fact creativity is a vital element for the future and is the solution to the creative crisis.

Education has tarnished the idea of an original thought and has caused us to “grow out of creativity.” An idea that I am now convinced is a possible reality due to the intellectual, thought-provoking argument made by Sir Ken Robinson that schools do restrain creativity. In Sir Ken Robinson’s TED talk “Do Schools Kill Creativity?” Robinson argues that schools do kill creativity by addressing his audience in a sophisticated yet playful tone that keeps the audience entertained and invested in what is being discussed. Robinson connects with the audience by telling jokes, using simple reasoning, facts, and personal stories that allows the audience to be emotionally moved by the argument. Robinson is able to open up the audience to a reasonable idea with only one reasonable solution, and it just so happens to be his. Obviously, a bit biased, Robinson steers clear of self-promotion by recalling stories of other’s accounts and relating to people as a professor instead of a person.

In this age of high-stakes standardized testing the idea of creativity in the classroom has become less and less popular. Susan W. Cress and Daniel T. Holm present a compelling case study for keeping creativity in the classroom in “Creative Endeavors: Inspiring Creativity in a First Grade Classroom” published online April 1, 2015 in the Early Childhood Education Journal.

During Jane McGonagall’s 2010 TED Talk video “Gaming can make a better world”, she states “the average young person today in a country with a strong gamer culture will have spent ten thousand hours gaming by age 21”. Such numbers alone should pique the interest of every educator in our country. Young people today spend the same amount of time learning at school as they spend gaming (TED Talk, 2010). Many people view video games as fun, exciting, and adventurous outlets where they can escape reality and be creative innovators. As educators, we want our classrooms to accomplish similar outcomes. We want learning to be fun, exciting, and adventurous. We want our learners to be creative, critical-thinking innovators who strive to change the world. This brief dissertation will evaluate the influences gamification can have on teaching and learning, the science behind learner motivation and its connection with gamification, analyze how gamifying supports differentiated ways to teach and learn, and discuss how technologies and gamification are being used to enhance teaching and learning.

Intrinsic motivation is a key aspect of student success in school. Van den Broeck, Vansteenkiste, and De Witte (2013) define intrinsic motivation as, “the engagement in an activity for its own sake, that is, for the satisfaction and enjoyment experienced during the course of the activity itself” (p. 4). Educators encourage intrinsic motivation within their students as it boosts

A smart man said “Creativity is as important as literacy and we should treat it with the same standing.” (Ken Robinson-“Do schools kill creativity?”). There are multiple studies on how creativity helps improve a student’s mind. Project based learning is a huge creative booster for students. A math teacher from California uses projects to do math instead of using the text book. From doing this, she’s had more students pass her class then from when she was teaching straight from the text books. Instead of having standardized tests, using more creative techniques for students to enjoy the learning they’ve done and for them to show the higher officials what the students are learning. Creativity is the process of turning real world problems into an understanding by extending the minds cognitive processes. In Alabama, kindergartners are studying different ways to be creative.

In his speech, "Do Schools Kill Creativity?", Ken Robinson (Robinson, 2006) discusses individual's creativity and the role of education in this field. Robinson argues that the major aim of teaching in school is to prepare pupils for their careers. He continues to suggest that "we are running education systems where mistakes are the worst thing you can do". (Robinson, 2006, p.7). He also adds that "we are educating people out of their creative capacities". His speech raises questions: "what is creativity?", "do schools kill creativity?" and can creativity be learned?

“Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.” Albert Einstein saw it. Everyone else should too. There’s something wrong with schools today. Students are taught to listen, not to learn. They’re given assignments that they don’t find interesting, they’re told to write papers on topics they have no interest in, and they’re asked to take tests on material they couldn’t care less about. Students are failing classes, and dropping out of school. Instead of the schools being built to accommodate new students and new methods of teaching, students are “built” to accommodate the school’s old ways of teaching. In order to properly educate and inspire creativity in students, there must education that is tailored to meet the needs of every student individually.

According to the article, "There are three psychological needs the games satisfy." The first is competency, which is why most gamified businesses use rewards. The second is the need of being able to choose, or autonomy. This is normally satisfied by choosing what path earns you points. The final need is the need to be recognized by your peers, which is why the games have you compete against other people. When all three of these are fulfilled by gamification, the game is very successful. In conclusion, the author of "Your Life: The Game" thinks gamification has personal advantages.

In today’s schools, creativity is seen as unimportant, unnecessary and impractical. Why? Some blame teachers, some blame schools, others even blame students, but the real culprit is standardized testing. Although standardized testing is a great way to gauge the knowledge of students on a national scale, it is a machine fueled by overwhelming standards and close minded, narrow thinking. In spite of recent changes like Common Core, standardized testing is still an issue. In a recent study of over 4,000 parents and teachers across the U.S., the large majority of subjects believed that the greatest barrier to creativity in education was an education system too reliant on testing and assessment. This is the same with cognitive skills like perception,