The Dangers of Gamification
With more focus being put on digital learning, there is a risk of ignoring long term outcomes for short term gains.
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Coronavirus has put an emphasis on digital or remote learning as schools needed to quickly transition from physical spaces to digital ones. While a lot of mistakes are being worked out, digital learning can offer some good takeaways changing the nature of learning when we reemerge from this pandemic. It also shines a spotlight on the digital and internet divide making the case that systems like internet access are utilities and basic infrastructure. But apart from those lessons I want to spend some time on another often missed lesson that can go unheeded by those who want to harness the power of games as tools of learning.
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Games are learning systems
All games are learning tools. Any game requires a player to learn skills that exploit or develop winning strategies. Even games that seem completely random like Match 3 have a great deal of strategy built in that good players know how to use. Games are great systems for teaching but making a good educational game is hard. It requires knowing how to use a game system to exposes learning concepts that are external to the game. This requires customization for each learning objective which can lead to longer development time, usertesting and iteration. So as a shortcut a lot of developers and program managers use elements of games to create an incentive for learners. Do well in a subject or perform well on a test and get some points. Earn enough points and win things or score high on a leaderboard.
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Internal vs External Motivations
Internal motivators are parts of a task or an activity that is inherently interesting. Reading a book can be inherently interesting because you are engaged with the story and what to find out what happens next.
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External motivators are things outside of that task that try to make it engaging. Things like getting stickers or earning points toward a pizza for reading a book. These are things that are not related to the activity but make the activity more engaging because we can earn or display something else.
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External motivators are great for short term behavioural changes. Summer reading programs use this all the time. Read so many books and get some kind of prize. But these effective short term trade offs usually have negative long term effects. The only type of task or activity that doesn't are tasks that lack any inherently interesting traits such as memorization, dull or mind numbing work.
Long term Consequences.
Hundreds of studies dating back to the 70s have researched the long term effects of using external motivators on things that have inherent interests. Things like drawing or solving puzzles or reading books. Using external motivators will get someone more engaged, doing more of the desired behavior when a prize is offered. But over time, when the prize is removed or even when it is still offered, users engagement with that interest diminishes sharply. "Tangible, expected, contingent rewards reduces free choice intrinsic motivation." - Chris Hecker
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The most common collection of these studies is a book by Alfie Kohn called Punished by Rewards. I was first introduced to this book by Chris Hecker's GDC talk in 2010 titled Achievements Considered Harmful? Which covers a lot of what is in the book.
Why is that the case? While it can't be definitively known, there are some assumptions.
One is that intrinsic motivators are better and stronger. If you want to do something you tend to be interested in it and that interest can build on itself. If you are interested in something you tend to be more creative in how you approch it, you tend to have better problem solving skills and the quality or outcome tends to be better than if someone paid you or rewarded you for it.
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Another is that when you give someone something external to get them to perform a task, they tend to focus on the reward while doing the task. This puts the emphasis and association to whatever I'm getting instead of whatever I am doing. This structure also reinforces the idea that the task must be hard or boring or not interesting because if it was, you wouldn't need to reward me for doing it.
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Stopping Exploration and Discovery
Focusing on the outcome and the reward also changes how people engage in the task. If I'm focused on trying to get that reward, this prevents me from taking chances that might not lead to the reward. I might choose the shortest books to get more in or books I'm not interested in just to check off the requirements for the prize. This prevents me from discovering stories I might be more engaged in or books that are longer or different. The prize incentive forces me to rethink how I navigate the task and this can prevent me from discovering something inherently enjoyable about the task.
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It also enforces the idea that there is a correct or right way to perform the task. By rewarding an outcome shows, indirectly, that doing something well or correct is most important. Failure is even worse because not only will I have to think about the fear of failure, but I focus on loss aversion. Even though I didn't have the prize yet, because it was offered, my mind acts as if I had received it and then if I don't do something to obtain the reward, it is as if I lost it and that sense of loss becomes much more amplified than the gain of that prize. This curbs my behavior to do anything that would avoid the loss and in some ways my focus is on preventing loss, not enjoying or engaging or playing with the task or concepts at hand.
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Capitalism and Pop Behaviorism
When I bring up these concepts to educators, instructional designers or educational game creators, they often are taken aback that adding gamification into subjects like math, reading and science could be harmful. Yet, there are over 60 years and hundreds of research papers showing such harm with talks and books circulating in recent decades. It could be that the reason this is so hard to grasp is that, in some ways, external motivators are fundamental to our time and culture. We live in a society that values work for the acquisition of goods. The idea that humans can be motivated by other things besides just money is at the heart of recent debates over universal basic income. The findings of limited implementation in countries that offer such benefits finds that employment stays consistent but the type of work might change.
Leaderboard Pressures
Another thing to consider that tends to fall between the cracks is leaderboards. Many instructional designers like leaderboards because it is an easy way to increase motivation and competition between players. However this can also have undesired consequences especially for users who might feel pressure in outperforming peers. Having a leaderboard can actually disincentivize certain groups of people from performing well because they don't want that social stigma of outperforming others or coming off as smart or geeky or competitive.
Teaching is hard, assessment is even harder but the lowest common denominator can have serious long term impacts.