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.