Gaming the Educational System

I did not grow up a “gamer.”

I never played D & D. We had an Atari (I am that old), but I had no thumb intelligence. I had no interest in PS anything, Nintendo, or any of the other game systems. I watched, observed, and studied kids playing lots of games through the years (both formally and informally). I was interested in how gaming related to the players’ brains and education, and I formed my own hypotheses.

I know certain things about gaming. Gaming gets some things very right that we in education have been doing, well, backwards, and maybe, just maybe, wrong.

I am not the first person to point this out (nor will I be the last), but it bears repeating: When it comes to grading student engagement and skill level, we have taken the whole idea of assessment, approached it backwards, and made it self-defeating and somewhat demoralizing. Let me explain.

Current assessment models assume all students start with an “A” or 100 points and then lose points from there based on wrong answers and other errors—it’s a subtractive model. The worse you do, the more points we subtract. And what if you do get, say an 85, which some would celebrate? What if the 15 missed points represent a failure to understand the most important concepts? Unless we are sure you will learn those concepts later, those holes could continue to undermine your understanding in the future. In the current system, students can only go downhill from where they begin. It punishes students for taking risks (they might be further penalized for a wrong answer), potentially even for trying to be creative, and may create gaps in understanding that persist over time.

Now let’s look at the gaming model. In gaming, you begin at the bottom, with no points. You gain points as you acquire skills–the more skills, the more points–and most of the time, you cannot acquire more points until you have truly mastered each level. Typically, you can try and try again at the same level until that level is attained, and then you move on. Rather than feeling like failures as they lose points, gamers feel proud as they achieve new skill levels. They can go at their own pace, accumulate as many points as they need in order to achieve the skill level they have set as their goal, as opposed to attaining a specific grade and stopping because they fear losing points.  By rewarding effort with achievement, gaming kindles a true growth mindset rather than cementing a fixed mindset.  This kind of additive system of assessment promotes problem-solving, flexible thinking, increasing levels of skill and conceptual understanding, self-pacing, differentiation, and deeper engagement, all while having fun.

Letter grades are unlikely to disappear immediately, but perhaps the time has come to rethink how we compute them. A game-like additive approach may make our “players” better learners who are more engaged in their studies. Maybe it’s time to rethink our goals and maybe, just maybe, game the system.

Nationally-recognized visionary in the areas of educational system improvement and innovation, educational consultant Marja Brandon has been a teacher, head of school, and founder of Seattle Girls School. She volunteers to offer advice and writes articles for TeensParentsTeachers.

 Like most of the pictures on TeensParentsTeachers, the picture posted with this article is courtesy of a free download from Pixabay.com.