Level-up Learning: How School Could Be a Better Game | Caitlin Holman | TEDxUofM

Summary

The speaker advocates for applying a 'game mindset' to life and learning, emphasizing intrinsic motivation over extrinsic rewards like grades. They discuss how games encourage autonomy, competency, and community, and suggest ways to integrate these principles into education and personal growth. The talk highlights the importance of seeking challenge, embracing failure, collaborating, and focusing on learning over grades to enhance intrinsic motivation.

Takeaways

• 🎮 **Game Mindset**: Approaching life with the mindset of playing a video game can lead to spending more time on challenging problems and learning from failures.
• 🧠 **Learning from Failure**: In games, failure is a stepping stone to success, encouraging experimentation and practice until mastery is achieved.
• 🚀 **Intrinsic Motivation**: Video games leverage intrinsic motivation, driving players to learn and improve through personal interest and enjoyment.
• 🏫 **Educational Structure**: Games are structurally similar to school, involving rules, challenges, and quantifiable outcomes, yet differ in their motivational approach.
• 📈 **Extrinsic vs. Intrinsic**: Schools often rely on grades and external rewards, whereas games foster intrinsic motivation through autonomy, competency, and belongingness.
• 🔄 **Reimagining Education**: Modern education, a product of industrialization, can be reimagined to incorporate gameful elements, enhancing learning experiences.
• 🌟 **Gradecraft**: The application Gradecraft supports gameful learning experiences, aiming to transform traditional courses.
• 📊 **Autonomy in Learning**: Games offer autonomy by allowing players to make meaningful choices, which can be applied to education to increase engagement.
• 💪 **Building Competency**: Game design starts players with easy tasks, building up to more difficult challenges, mirroring effective learning progression.
• 🤝 **Community and Belongingness**: Games foster community, enhancing motivation and learning through social interaction and support.
• 📈 **Leveling Up in Life**: The principles of game design can be applied to personal life to improve learning and motivation in any environment.

Q & A

What is the main difference between how people approach video games and how they approach life?

People approach video games with a mindset of discovery, failure, practice, and mastery, spending hours working on challenging problems and experimenting until they succeed. In life, this mindset is not as commonly applied.

What is the role of intrinsic motivation in video games?

Intrinsic motivation in video games drives players to work through challenges due to their personal interest and enjoyment in the activity, rather than external rewards.

How does the concept of 'gameful design' relate to learning experiences?

Gameful design involves using elements from video games to create powerful learning environments that are engaging and motivate learners intrinsically.

What is the primary difference between the structure of games and school?

Games and school are structurally similar as they both involve systems with rules, challenges, and quantifiable outcomes. However, games leverage intrinsic motivation while schools rely on extrinsic motivators like grades and degrees.

Why were grades originally invented and how do they relate to education?

Grades were invented in factories to describe the quality of goods produced. In education, they were used to sort students into categories, rather than to measure learning or teaching effectiveness.

How does the traditional school system hinder personalized learning?

The traditional school system, designed for standardization during industrialization, groups students by age and standardizes content and assignments, making it difficult for teachers to focus on individual student needs.

What are the three principles of intrinsic motivation according to self-determination theory?

The three principles of intrinsic motivation are autonomy (meaningful choices), competency (the ability to succeed), and belongingness (feeling connected to others).

How do video games provide autonomy to players?

Video games offer autonomy by allowing players to make choices about when, where, and how to play, as well as what goals to pursue within the game.

How does the concept of competency in games differ from that in schools?

In games, players start with easy tasks and progress to harder ones, ensuring a sense of competency. In contrast, schools often have a one-size-fits-all approach, which may not match individual competency levels.

What is the impact of grading curves on student motivation?

Grading curves can demotivate students because their success depends on the failure of their peers, discouraging collaboration and mutual support.

How can formal education be changed to support intrinsic motivation?

Formal education can support intrinsic motivation by incorporating gameful elements such as leveling systems, choices in course design, explicit competency progression, and community building.

What advice does the speaker give for improving one's own learning environment?

The speaker advises seeking out challenges, allowing for failure, practicing, collaborating, and customizing assignments to make learning more engaging and intrinsically motivated.

Outlines

00:00

🎮 The Power of the Game Mindset in Learning

The speaker begins by drawing a comparison between the dedication and problem-solving mindset of gamers and how that can be applied to life. They propose that if we approached life's challenges with the same determination and learning mindset as in video games, we could achieve more. The speaker, a gameful designer, explores how games create powerful learning environments and mentions the development of an application called Gradecraft to enhance learning experiences. The talk highlights the motivational principles used by video games and contrasts the intrinsic motivation found in gaming with the extrinsic motivation of traditional schooling, which relies on grades and external rewards. The historical context of modern education is discussed, revealing how it was designed for standardization rather than personalized learning.

05:01

📚 Rethinking Schooling: Extrinsic vs. Intrinsic Motivation

This paragraph delves into the traditional school structure's reliance on extrinsic motivation, such as grades, to drive student action. The speaker shares personal experiences of writing uninteresting papers and adhering to strict deadlines that did not enhance learning. They discuss how grades often fail to reflect true learning and can lead to a sense of relief rather than achievement. The concept of intrinsic motivation is introduced, emphasizing its benefits like deeper learning and creativity. The speaker then outlines the three essential elements for supporting intrinsic motivation: autonomy, competency, and belongingness, and compares how games and schools fare in providing these elements.

10:03

🚀 Enhancing Learning Through Gameful Design

The speaker discusses the shift from traditional grading systems to a gameful approach that fosters intrinsic motivation. They describe how video game leveling systems can be applied to education, starting with zero and building up through achievements. The paragraph also covers the integration of choices into course design, making competency explicit through preparatory assignments, and the rejection of grading curves to encourage collaborative learning. The speaker shares insights from their work in transforming courses into more engaging and effective learning environments using tools like Gradecraft.

15:03

💼 Applying Intrinsic Motivation to Lifelong Learning

In the final paragraph, the speaker emphasizes the importance of intrinsic motivation in lifelong learning beyond formal education. They provide advice on seeking challenges, embracing failure, practicing, and collaborating to enhance personal growth. The speaker also encourages finding ways to make traditional courses work for oneself and highlights that learning is more valuable than grades in the long run. The talk concludes with an encouragement to use intrinsic motivation to level up one's life and to approach learning with personal goals in mind.

Keywords

💡Intrinsic Motivation

Intrinsic motivation refers to the drive to engage in an activity purely for the enjoyment or satisfaction it brings, rather than for external rewards. In the video, the speaker argues that games leverage intrinsic motivation effectively, encouraging players to explore, experiment, and persist through challenges for the love of the game itself, rather than for external rewards like grades or recognition.

💡Extrinsic Motivation

Extrinsic motivation is the drive to complete tasks or engage in activities because of external rewards or pressures. The video discusses how traditional education systems often rely on extrinsic motivators like grades and degrees, which may not foster a genuine interest in learning but rather encourage compliance and meeting external standards.

💡Autonomy

Autonomy is the ability to make choices and have control over one's actions and decisions. In the context of the video, the speaker suggests that games provide a high degree of autonomy, allowing players to choose when, where, and how to play, which enhances intrinsic motivation. In contrast, traditional education often lacks this autonomy, with students following a prescribed curriculum and schedule.

💡Competency

Competency in this video refers to the feeling of being capable and having the skills necessary to succeed at a task. The speaker contrasts the way games gradually increase difficulty to match a player's skill level with how schools often move students through a curriculum regardless of their individual competencies, which can lead to boredom or frustration.

💡Belongingness

Belongingness is the feeling of being connected to others and being part of a community. The video highlights how games can foster a sense of belongingness through collaborative play and shared experiences. The speaker suggests that this sense of community can be powerful in motivating players and is something that traditional education can learn from to enhance student motivation.

💡Gameful Design

Gameful design is the application of game design elements and principles to non-game contexts, such as education, to motivate and engage participants. The speaker, as a gameful designer, studies how games create powerful learning environments and applies these insights to reimagine learning experiences outside of games, such as in educational settings.

💡Gradecraft

Gradecraft is an application mentioned in the video that supports gameful learning experiences. It is designed to help educators create courses that are more engaging and motivating by incorporating game-like elements, such as leveling systems and choices, to enhance student learning and intrinsic motivation.

💡Personalized Learning

Personalized learning is an educational approach that tailors instruction to individual students' needs, strengths, and interests. The video discusses how technology is enabling personalized learning, which contrasts with the traditional one-size-fits-all model of education that was designed for standardization and efficiency.

💡Self-Determination Theory

Self-determination theory is a psychological theory that emphasizes the importance of intrinsic motivation for engaging in and enjoying activities. The video references this theory to explain the benefits of intrinsic motivation, such as working harder, learning more deeply, and being more creative when individuals are driven by interest and enjoyment rather than external rewards.

💡Leveling Systems

Leveling systems in games are mechanisms that allow players to progress through increasing levels of difficulty as they gain experience and skills. The speaker suggests that educational courses can adopt a similar approach, starting with basic tasks and building up to more complex challenges, which can help students feel a sense of accomplishment and progress.

💡Challenge

In the context of the video, challenge refers to the idea of seeking out tasks or problems that are difficult but achievable, pushing individuals to grow and learn. The speaker encourages finding the right level of challenge to avoid boredom and to foster learning, which is a central concept in the video's message about engaging with learning environments.

Highlights

People spend hundreds of hours in video games to solve problems and improve skills.

Video games encourage players to enter challenging environments and experiment until they succeed.

Games help players identify their strengths and weaknesses to devise effective solutions.

The game mindset involves intense work, confidence in achieving goals, and willingness to try again.

Games are structured similarly to school, involving rules, conflict, and quantifiable outcomes.

The difference between games and school lies in the use of intrinsic motivation in games versus extrinsic in school.

Modern education is a product of industrialization, with grades originally used in factories.

Grades were never intended to measure learning quality but to categorize students.

Technology is now enabling personalized learning, despite the standardized educational system.

Extrinsic motivation in school focuses on grades rather than learning.

Intrinsic motivation theory highlights the benefits of being driven by interest and enjoyment.

Games provide autonomy by allowing players to make meaningful choices.

Games ensure competency by starting with easy tasks and gradually increasing difficulty.

Games foster a sense of belongingness through community and social interaction.

To support intrinsic motivation, education should provide autonomy, competency, and belongingness.

Gradecraft is an application designed to support gameful learning experiences.

Courses can be made gameful by incorporating leveling systems, choices, and explicit competency requirements.

To improve learning, seek challenges, allow for failure, collaborate, and focus on learning over grades.

Intrinsic motivation can be applied to any learning environment to enhance personal growth.

Transcripts

how would you behave differently if you

approached life the way you would play a

video game in games people choose to

spend hundreds and thousands of hours

working on challenging problems they

choose to enter environments where they

have little to no skill and explore an

experiment until they figure out how to

succeed they solve problems by thinking

about their own strengths and their

weaknesses and the circumstances around

them until they can come up with a

solution that works if you could take

that mindset that pattern of discovering

and failing and practicing and mastering

the willingness to work on it intensely

the confidence that you can achieve your

goal if you could apply that to your own

life what would you achieve the game

mindset tells us that any problem we

encounter is there for you to solve you

just need to think about it right work

on it enough build a community of people

to help you and try it one more time if

you could draw that mindset out of your

game controllers figure out what drives

it I am a gameful designer I study games

and the powerful learning environments

that they create and I use them as

inspiration to reimagine how learning

could happen anywhere I'm also the lead

developer of gradecraft

an application that we've built

specifically to support these learning

experiences because as we've found with

these spaces they need to be carefully

curated today I'm gonna draw out a

couple of motivational principles that

video games use to convince us to work

so hard I'm gonna describe a couple of

the techniques that we're using in

courses to transform them into better

learning experiences

I'm going to call out a couple of things

that you can do to change any learning

environment that you find yourself in to

make it more engaging games are more

similar to school structurally than you

might have imagined games are formally

defined as systems in which players

engage in artificial conflict so any

test or assignment that you may have

ever taken defined by rules the grading

schemes that you find yourself measured

against and resulting in a quantifiable

outcome the grade you learn what makes

school and grades so fundamentally

different in experience I believe that

the core reason they are different is

that games leverage the power of what

psychologists call intrinsic motivation

to convince us to work us through the

process of wanting to learn while school

relies on graves and degrees extrinsic

motivators to pull us through what they

want us to learn but we designed school

this way and I believe that we can

change how this functions schoolers that

exist today is a relatively recent

invention modern education is a direct

product of industrialization grades were

actually invented in factories to

convince to help describe whether or not

the goods that were created were good

enough to be sold in order to

mass-produce education we grouped

students by age we standardized content

and assignments but it's important to

remember that grades were never never

not from the beginning about good

learning or teaching they were brought

in to help sort students into categories

of whether or not how well they were

doing the industrialization of education

was a massive achievement broadening

access to millions but what did we lose

in that transition a tutor can customize

learning to an

student a teacher facing 30-plus

students in a classroom where do they

focus their instruction at any given

moment someone is ahead and therefore

bored and someone is behind and

therefore unlikely to succeed we are

just now approaching the moment where we

can imagine building technology that

enables instructors to personalize

learning for all while continuing to

broaden access the trouble is that we're

building these innovative technologies

within the box of an educational system

that was designed for standardization

traditional school structures doubled

down on extrinsic motivation good grades

are an incentive to get students to take

action for the purposes of earning a

good grade I have written about topics I

did not find interesting or relevant to

my future I have subscribed to all sorts

of timelines and deadlines formatting

requirements length requirements that

had nothing to do with my own content

mastery and certainly weren't good for

my health my social or emotional life or

my learning in other classes I have

crammed to earn good grades in classes

that featured final exams that were high

stakes but I really wish I could tell

you anything about what I learned in

those classes and to pull back the

curtain on the other side of this

endeavor ask teachers what it's like to

grade mind-numbingly boring they will

tell you painful grades have become such

a powerful and effective incentive that

we have lost all sight of the learning

grades penalize us for what we don't yet

know and fail to communicate to others

what we actually have learned we've

replaced the sense of achievement from

learning something new with the relief

of having been deemed just good enough

to go on think back about grades that

you earned and what they actually

represented

at the assignment level they usually

describe something about your

proficiency level how good you were at

something but they also probably

describe how good you are at following

instructions at the course level they

summarized a bunch of assignments and

they have it usually a stronger weight

on things like cumulative exams or final

projects or papers but somewhere in that

grade there's also usually something

about how often you went to class

whether you felt comfortable talking in

class how well you and the instructor

got along how hard the instructor

thought you worked when we've inflated

all of that learning into a single

letter grade we have a remarkably little

idea of what a student has learned or

knows from any particular class 40 years

of motivation research has produced

self-determination theory it highlights

the powerful effect of intrinsic

motivation when you're intrinsically

motivated you take action because you

want to you're interested in the topic

you enjoy the activity and the research

shows tremendous benefits to both you

and the work you do when you're

intrinsically motivated you work harder

you learn more deeply you're more

creative

there are even ties to better health

grades are a powerful extrinsic

motivator but they fall flat when it

comes to nurturing the intrinsic

motivation to learn so how do we move

from a system that is built so totally

around extrinsic motivation and over to

one that can support learning in a way

that would do so much good research

tells us that you need three things to

support intrinsic motivation the first

thing you need is autonomy you need to

have meaningful choices over what you do

and how you do it the second thing you

need is competency you need to feel like

you have a shot at succeeding that means

that it needs to feel accessible to you

but also that it's hard enough to be

interesting it's

challenge finally you need to feel

belongingness you need to feel connected

to the people around you like they

respect you and think that you're

capable of doing this work consider how

games and school compare on the three

principles of intrinsic motivation games

give us autonomy in spades

we make choices about when to play and

where to play and who to play as and

gonna play with what to pick up which

path to take school not so much in a

class together students will do these

same work in the same way at the same

time all for achieving the same learning

objectives without consideration for

where they came from or where they're

going with that knowledge game designers

enforce competency players start with

easy tasks and they build hard ones if

you don't learn you can't go on school

on the other hand takes an assembly line

approach to learning students move

forward on the conveyor belt of

knowledge regardless of where their own

competency sits and a solely based on

the time in the course we set the

expectation of achieving competency but

we have such brittle markers for

actually managing it students might fail

a class and have to retake it and if

they don't they can't take an advanced

level course on the other hand maybe you

skip a class you test out of it or you

skip a grade but these are rare outcomes

it's far more common to move forward

with a relative relatively mediocre

grade that has no information in it

about what the next instructor who works

with you needs to know about what you do

or don't know for them to build on

finally consider the powerful way that

games use community to build

belongingness think back on the best

teachers that you had the ones who

changed your life the ones who made your

friends rave after class they

they have some magic about bringing

content to life sure but they also

shared with you the feeling that you

could succeed it's a simple thing but

has it it has a remarkably profound

effect on our motivation and when you

find yourself in the opposite

circumstance and you're fighting not

only to learn but the very perception

that you're capable of learning it's

incredibly hard to be motivated to put

in the effort in this fight so what can

we do to change how formal education

works to support intrinsic motivation

the first thing that we can do that we

are doing is change how these courses

actually work for the past five years

I've been working with a team of

instructors all over the country to make

courses gameful we have built gradecraft

specifically to support these courses

because the things that we're changing

fundamentally alter how courses work and

the assumptions that and they question

the assumptions that other learning

technologies are based on the first

thing we do is we take a cue from how

video game leveling systems actually

work you start with zero you build up

every time you do something you earn

points and recognition of that progress

this steps away from the traditional

school model where you start with a

hundred percent you haven't actually

shown that you know anything and every

time you do something you lose points

you go down next we build choices into

the course design itself depending on

the course and the instructor we have

had students empowered to make decisions

about which learning objectives to focus

on when to do assignments who to work

with whether or not to take final exams

how much assignments will count towards

their grades we make competency explicit

we create advanced assignments that you

have to do earlier preparatory

assignments in order to unlock you may

have to do the early assignments

multiple times before you show that

you've got the skill and the knowledge

to move on we say no to grading curves

because if your success depends on your

peers failure there is no chance that

you will be motivated to help each other

learn in these environments at any

moment in our lives most of us are

facing the need to learn something new

my work focuses on how to build

intrinsic motivation into our formal

education to improve the learning and

motivation in that space but the thing

that I've most taken away from my work

is that if we understand intrinsic

motivation it is such a powerful thing

that we can embed it in our own lives to

improve any learning environment we find

ourselves in so here's my list on how to

do just that

one seek out the challenge whatever it

is that you do whatever space you work

within find the limits of your abilities

and your knowledge and push do not be

bored do not host find the hardest thing

that you think you can do and try it out

to allow for failure because if you

picked the right challenge it's not

gonna be easy try it out again and again

practice ask for help ask the people

around you what it is but you are not

doing right and do just that and if

you're not failing if you're succeeding

at it every time you didn't pick a hard

enough challenge up the difficulty level

work at the just that edge of your

ability that is where there is so much

learning to be had three collaborate the

group work that we do in school can feel

inauthentic and painful but most of life

beyond school involves working with a

team teams have been some of the most

profound spaces that I have ever

experienced it's where you are pushed to

be your best self it's where you are

pushed to grow figure out how to be part

of a good team how to communicate

how to learn some other people for Maude

teaching is hard and I have had a front

row seat to instructors choosing to up

their own difficulty level because the

impact that they're seeing on their

students is profound so you have mad

props to the people that we're working

with us on this but if you find yourself

in a course that has a more traditional

structure recognize how hard that is to

and don't give up on the idea of the

internet being intrinsically motivated

find ways to make that course work for

you ask if you can customize an

assignment bring learning from outside

the classroom in take opportunities and

ask the instructor if you can expand

your knowledge and finally learning is

better than grades bad grades won't get

you a job but good grades don't mean

that you do we are increasingly hearing

from employers that they're not looking

at GPA and transcript because they tell

such a limited story after school you

are left with whatever you've earned and

whether or not you have learned how to

learn today we have more resources

available to us to learn than ever

before we can learn anything so explore

diversify specialize but whatever you

choose to pursue to learn make sure that

you do it with your own goals in mind

you just may be surprised how you can

level up your own life thank you