Make Learning Fun Again: 6 Perks of Leveraging Games in Education

While many students find learning tedious, they often lack the motivation to do their best in school. Being so demotivated, they start facing a variety of academic challenges. They get exposed to high levels of stress, lack time for homework, experience troubles with their assignments, turn to professionals from a paper and dissertation writing service to ease the tension, and many of them don’t even want to go to school anymore. But, there is a way to change this.

To bring back students’ motivation and help them perform better, schools and teachers should focus on boosting students’ engagement in the learning process. Simply put, they have to make it fun.

And what can possibly be a better way to make learning fun than using games? – Probably nothing. Gamification in education is now incredibly popular, and there are plenty of reasons for that, which we are going to discuss below.

How Does the Concept of Gamification Fit into the Learning Environment?

Basically, the core concept behind gamified education is to bring different game elements to a classroom setting. The main purpose of this is to keep learners more engaged and motivated.

It is crucial to understand what game elements teachers can integrate into classroom activities to understand the idea of gamified learning. Despite the common belief, it doesn’t mean playing games with students for days on end. The idea is much deeper. Namely, the elements that can be leveraged include:

1. Customization;
2. Competition;
3. Objectives;
4. Scoring;
5. Roleplaying;
6. Awards.

These six elements are basically what makes games so fun. When the same elements are being adopted in a classroom, this creates a sense of immersion and, thus, makes the process more fun for students. As a result, even those students who tend to get help from professional essay writers and rely on essaypro.com reviews as well as reviews of other writing services, skip lessons, and stay inactive in a classroom, will change their attitude toward learning.

From a teacher’s perspective, there are two ways to leverage this concept. First of all, they can use these elements outside games by creating fun classroom activities. And secondly, they, of course, can use actual educational games.

Now, let’s look at some of the biggest perks of bringing actual games to the classroom.

6 Reasons to Adopt Games in Education

1. Building Vital Skills

First and foremost, all educational games are aimed at helping students acquire specific skills. Namely, there are math games meant for improving math skills, games for writing practice designed to help students write better, and there are many other examples. In the process of playing, learners can acquire a variety of skills faster and easier. So, this is the first benefit of gamified learning.

2. Boosting Attention

Have you ever noticed how hard it can be to stay concentrated when, let’s say, reading something you are not interested in, and how easy it is to do so while playing an engaging game? This phenomenon is easy to explain. When you are engaged in something, you naturally stay focused. And this is one more perk of games in education that we can leverage for ensuring students’ success.

According to research by one of the professors at Nottingham University, online games help students stay concentrated. It was also added that games could be especially beneficial for kids with attention disorders.

3. Becoming More Tech-Savvy

There is no secret that we are now living in a world that is dominated by technology. Today, we use technology in all spheres of our lives and work. Therefore, becoming computer fluent and tech-savvy is now more important than ever before.

This gets us to the next benefit of using games in a classroom. By doing so, we will help learners gain computer and simulation fluency that will later help them succeed in academics, at work, and in life in general.

4. Developing Problem-Solving and Strategic Thinking

Whether in the academic, professional, or personal life, being able to think strategically and solve problems fast are the two vital abilities that have a direct impact on your success. Now, guess what? Games actually help you develop both of these skills. While playing games, students will face many tasks and challenges that have to be solved quickly. As a result, they will get much better at fast problem-solving and strategic thinking. They will learn to think outside the box. And they will also develop their logic.

5. Expanding Memory Capacity

If you compare different games, you can notice one shared feature that most of them have – their gameplays are almost always revolving around memorization and utilization. Due to this reason, it is believed that playing games can actually expand a player’s memory capacity.

6. Boosting Motivation

Finally, since playing games is surely fun for students of all ages, bringing them to the classroom can help us take students’ engagement and motivation to a whole new level. Staying 100% involved and engaged in the learning process, students tend to show better outcomes. So playing games in school can directly impact students’ academic success.

To Sum Up

Now you know what gamified learning is and how it can affect the performance and outcomes of students. As you can see, leveraging games in the process of education has many perks. So to help their students succeed in academics and life, teachers should integrate games into their classrooms.