Learning and the Brain: Gamification

Yousef (Dillo) '25 explores how gamification can harness the brain's natural reward systems to enhance learning. Through Dillo's personal experience in his College Physics and Calculus class and using the lens of the neuroscience of learning, they examine how game-like elements such as incremental challenges, group competition, and frequent rewards can transform student engagement.

Yousef (Dillo) '25 - Lesson #16: Gamification

Everyone loves games. They're fun and stimulating, and for some reason, there's just an innate urge to keep playing. Once you run onto the field or pick up the controller, it's actually quite hard to stop. But what is it that keeps us glued—why do I feel like I have to keep playing?

The short answer: rewards. Although sports like soccer keep us playing with goals or little wins like "megging" a defender, video games specifically are notorious for causing that overwhelming sense of motivation to keep grinding for whatever prize is ahead of us. Through points, leaderboards, challenges, and coins - they place us in a tunnel vision to earn that prize- but, even more than that, to continue grinding after we've received that reward. 

Rather than nod our heads and use that as an explanation for why we feel glued, let's utilize the brain's love for games to learn. 

As Steve's last blog mentioned, some "dos" for teaching resonate with the idea of gamifying learning here. Of them, frequent lower-stake assessments, letting students play around with ideas, and repetition all struck me. In video games, there are often hundreds and hundreds of little objectives that gradually build to that final boss, giving you coins or some prize for each one on the way up the ladder. Teachers can use a similar strategy to achieve that game effect in a classroom. 

While writing this, I concluded that my favorite class this year, one that excites me to walk in every day, might employ such a plan. In Buz's College Physics and Calculus class, the teaching style and curriculum are different from the traditional approach I've experienced all my life. When the class walks in, we first discuss the homework in small groups, and, usually, nobody has perfected it, which creates a fun competition to see who's done the best work, getting a "happy day" from Buz as a reward. In all seriousness, Buz structures his teaching so that there isn't one monotonous lecture stretched out over 60 minutes. After going over the homework, he'll introduce a project or a new concept, and after explaining, we'll go back to the groups to try out problems meant to seem almost impossible - without help. And that's the key. There's a healthy game at hand when left with a couple of motivated students in a group of three. Granted, I lose every round because of my atrocious physics skills, but it's motivating and helps consolidate learning. Those little objectives - from playing with problems to frequent projects to quizzes - all build to our final boss: the final exam. 

Reflecting on my first experience in a classroom that feels gamified, I have to admit its efficacy. After scoring high in the 90s on my fall term final, I felt ecstatic. Though with neuroscience on my mind, I had to confront why I had done so well in a class I wasn't skilled at and with a subject matter that hadn't particularly interested me beforehand. In feeling that strong desire from playing the 'game' of Buz's class, I was propelled to succeed, even at tasks I wasn't expecting to. 

Steve's Response

I very much appreciate Dillo's thoughts and will respond to him with three different perspectives.

(1) For all the books and theories of "brain based teaching" over-statements, there is wide agreement that engagement is the threshold to learning. Dillo describes gamification as a powerful tool to incite engagement. When he and I blogged together about the dopamine rush, we explained the double edge of the human desire for the adrenaline rush. On the one hand, it is no surprise that software designers are harnessing (often abusing) that craving in how they design games and invoke the siren call of social media addiction. On the other hand, wise classroom teachers are successfully employing game theory to inspire learning.

(2) We should not buy into the pop-science notion that today's learners have limited attention spans. Watch this generation of children focus and persevere with their favorite virtual games. Simply because mainstream media give us ever-shorter news clips, there is no evidence that the human brain is losing its capacity to pay attention. Dillo describes how gamification mechanisms in his neuroscience class impel students to focus deeply, think more critically, and persist until understanding emerges. 

(3) A significant controversy in the field of neuroscience revolves around the use of games to improve cognitive function. Adam Gazzaley at the University of California San Francisco is a leading proponent of harnessing the power of games to address cognitive challenges associated with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. He has designed software to provide neurofeedback games - targeted cognitive interventions - that seek to utilize the brain's rewards system to help children and adults to get good at skills that were previous weaknesses.

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