I think that gamification is an awesome way to get students involved in a low-stakes way. I would absolutely use gamification in my practice. Likely both online / digital gamification and gamifying activities in the class. This lecture made me reflect back to our orientation day in September, where we were put into teams and were competing to complete our native plants bingo. Myself and another person in my group became really competitive and got so into it (which was really fun), but afterwards I reflected on the competitiveness, I thought it was not good that we’d become that competitive. Our instructor at the end of the activity told us that he purposely made it something where we would get competitive, because team tasks are an awesome way to gel new groups of people.

Photo by Nick Fewings on Unsplash

I think a potential issue with gamifications such as Kahoot, or video game type things, is that students may take it less seriously, and also behave less appropriately for school. I’m thinking specifically about how students may taunt or name call each other in a way they may if they were playing this game outside the classroom. So, some gamification may pose additional classroom management challenges.