Reset - Gamification to Improve Engagement

It's been a while. I am resurrecting this to help focus myself, and keep my thoughts straight.

There have been lots of changes at my high school over the past couple of years. We have a completely new administration. There are more demands on my time. My classes are much larger, and the curriculum has changed.

We are back on an alternating block schedule after a year or two on straight block. We have four periods A day and four periods B day. My schedule looks like this:

A day:
1 - Planning
2 - Ceramics I
3 - Ceramics I
4 - Ceramics II & III

B day:
1 - Planning
2 - Video Game Design I
3 - Video Game Design I
4 - Video Game Design II & III

I won a scholarship the first day back to school to do the National Board Certification process. I am going to recommend that they draw for this at the end of the school year instead of the beginning, because having the summer to plan would have been helpful. While I have read all of my standards and components, I haven't DONE much yet, and it's already halfway through January. Another teacher and I took last Friday off, and Thursday evening headed three and a half hours north to her parents' timeshare to work on our NB stuff.

Two of the things you need to address for Component 4 are a student need and a professional development need. For my student need, I chose that students try to do the minimum amount of work to get by - they are unmotivated and afraid to take risks. For my professional need, I chose to learn how to fix this.

I had been stumped when trying to choose a student need. Then, as I was looking at articles on game design for my Video Game Design students, I ran across an article on gamification in education.

I had attempted gamification once before. I had a class, Comic Art, that was what teachers refer to as a 'dumping ground.' Only a few students signed up for the course, so the rest of the students were students who either didn't want to be there, or who did not fill out a schedule (and also didn't want to be there). These students were also afraid to try to draw, because they had no art experience. I attempted to use Classcraft to help engage the kids. It simply became another tool for disruption. I did not understand how to properly use gamification to engage my students, and Classcraft was not a match for my needs.

Most of my students this year were ones who actually wanted to take my courses, so that isn't a problem. I still have several students, a few in each class, who are unmotivated and content to take an F. I have tried several solutions (begging, choice based learning, proximity seating, etc.) but these haven't worked. When I ran across the gamification article, the lightbulb went off. This could work as my student need for Component 4, and it will help me get my students engaged (hopefully).

I am going to try this with my Advanced Ceramics class. This is a mix of Ceramics II and III. This class is where the lack of motivation is most obvious. Also, the majority of these students have not tried anything new this semester, unless directly assigned by me. Their projects are a mix of assignments that I give (create an artwork that will hang, made of multiple pieces) and projects they do on their own (a jewelry box, a bathroom set - soap dish, toothbrush holder, whatever they choose).

I started by re-reading Explore Like a Pirate by Michael Matera. I also read Gamify Your Classroom by Dr. Matthew Farber. I joined several professional development communities, including the #XPLAP, #TLAP, #games4ed, #GBL, and #gamification Twitter chats, and the GAMIFICATION and Gamification for Education groups on Facebook. I brainstormed with the other art teachers in my system before implementation, and I plan to use all of these communities when I hit difficulties.

One of the things I will need to do is show evidence of meeting the student need. I know many of my students are unmotivated in my classroom. I think all of them could be more engaged. The problem is how to show evidence (assuming they improve). So far, I plan to compare before and after using four data points:  number of projects completed within a set time, complexity of projects completed, student survey, and classroom observation.

Next post:  the plan.