Here Are Some Ways To Incorporate Game-Based Learning In The Classroom

Gamification is a new trend in the education industry, which is driving the teaching-learning experience to a new interesting level.

FREMONT, CA: Unlike the traditional classrooms, the classrooms of the present century are smart and exciting, and these classrooms are taking the education to a higher level. Game-based learning is another new feature of the intelligent classes, which is changing the whole teaching and learning process. Game-based learning is a special breed of learning experience. It is designed to balance subject matter with game play and the ability of the player to retain and apply said subject matter to the real world.

Here are five steps to integrate game-based learning in the classroom:

1.Find out the purpose of using a game

Games can be used in a classroom mainly for three purposes - involvement, enrichment and reinforcement. In a class, if a student is struggling to understand a core material through the given study material, teachers can use games to address their trouble spots. Games are the multipurpose source as it will educate the student as well entertains them. It will pose news ways to process the content by giving question through audio, video, images, and more. Some games have multi-player feature so in that students will compete against each other to get higher scores. In this way, these games will engage the whole class.

2.Ensure it meets expectations from parents

Before introducing the game-based learning into the classrooms, school administrators should inform the parents about the whole plan. Parents play a critical role in students’ life, so involving parents in these types of activities will bring better results.

3.Play the game yourself, ensuring its alignment to students’ learning goals

Before applying a game in the classroom, one should play it and make appropriate note of it to make sure whether it is useful or not for students. The games should have features such as teacher control, intuitiveness, different types of contents, and should engage students.

Some educational games enable teachers to control content and adjust settings for individual students. If the content of the game is engaging, then only it will attract the students and develop an interest in them to use those games for learning purpose. An educational game must have different types of contents for learning and to spot diverse trouble spots.

4.Dedicate time to consistent in-class play

To get better results of game-based learning, teachers and students should contribute some time for game-based activities. Teachers can include these games as a designated activity in the lesson plan to engage students in an interesting manner. If there are limited devices in the classroom, teachers can plan some non-digital games such as board games with educational value.

5.Evaluate progress throughout play

Teachers can collect data from these games to uncover the trouble spots and aptitudes of the students. Some of the educational games record every student’s marks separately for a series of questions, and these data will help the teachers to teach students according to their need. Teachers can encourage self-reporting among students for the games, which do not have reporting features. By self-reporting, students can easily take ownership of their progress and can update it timely. After these activities, teachers can encourage class discussion, which will enable each group to share their progress, troubles, and achievements with the whole class.

There are several advantages of the advanced technique of game-based learning for education and training; here are some of them:

• It helps in retaining learning insights.

• It increases a student’s memory capacity.

• It stimulates the imagination power.

• Simplify the difficult concept.

• It develops the habit of problem solving.

• It helps to accelerate receptivity to learning.

• It reduces the chance of failures in the real world.

• It develops the habit of learning by doing.

• The knowledge lasts for the lifetime.