Bell, K. (2018). Game on! Gamification, gameful design, and the rise of the gamer educator. Baltimore, MD: John Hopkins University Press.

In the current era of rampant student debt and a growing awareness of how disproportionately it affects students from lower-income families and underrepresented minorities, student retention and degree completion is a critical piece of the effort to narrow the gap. Many students may struggle with the balance of competing priorities and pressures that are foreign to more affluent peers. Without a strong support network or lacking family and community examples of how to succeed in this new setting, current disincentives can overpower long-term benefits that may seem too remote for realistic achievement. If students enroll in a postsecondary institution, but leave without a degree and with a heavy debt load, they are unlikely to receive much benefit from their initial efforts to attend. 

Dr. Kevin Bell suggests that gamification is a promising approach towards better student engagement with class material and improved scholastic rigor. Games can be difficult, yet still enjoyable and worth persistent effort. Few players expect to finish a video game without a single misstep. He also posits that now is a time in which early players of arcade and home console games are reaching a stage in their academic careers to have the freedom to try novel approaches in their teaching methods and philosophies. His book, Game On!, explores five case studies of gameful teaching at the university level to discuss early steps in implementation of games in post-secondary education and how they might have a lasting effect on students and educational programs alike.

As the book begins, he cites James Paul Gee’s summation of three basic elements of game design that fit well into education. These elements are summed up as follows. Both new players and new learners first need to be enticed to try, despite a high likelihood of initial failure. This is followed by the need to put in significant effort with possibly minimal initial motivation. Finally, they need to experience some level of success as a result of those efforts. Dr. Bell proposes that gameful design may get students past the initial fear of failure, and hopefully help them achieve a sufficient level of mastery in a subject for the topic itself to generate interest. One of the concepts that returned throughout the book was the importance of creating situations where initial failure is expected and motivating, rather than discouraging or an obstacle to further advancement. This is the usual model in video games, but less common in the academic world, where a failed test can have dramatic negative effects on both grades and motivation. 

While Game On! focused on the postsecondary level of education, I found this assessment to be a compelling start to the book and a philosophy that resonated with my own experiences with discouraged learners of all ages. As an educator and a librarian, I have observed that overcoming a sense of defeat is frequently the first step towards improved learning and scholastic results. Until a learner convinces themself that they are capable of mastery in a subject, they have little chance of success. As I read the book, I was drawn to the myriad opportunities it provided to see new approaches for involving students in subject matter and academic practices. With these differing entry points, material can seem more accessible and less daunting. When learning is presented as an invitation to interact with ideas and material, rather than a monolithic challenge to be conquered only to then tackle yet another monolith, students can become engaged at their own pace and with more sense of both personal agency and investment. Each featured instructor’s method emphasized distinct aspects of a gameful approach to their subject matter and how their students interacted with it. 

Dr. Bell described five very different game styles, ranging from role-playing and Easter egg quests to choose-your-own adventure scenarios to thriller-style spy games, at universities around the United States and Canada. In all cases, instructor goals included enhancing learner  motivation to engage meaningfully with the subject matter, and fostering good practices around learning and using information. Most of the case studies described a single cycle of a class, or occasionally two iterations, meaning sample sizes were not convincing on a grand scale, but each instructor was able to cite indicators of higher achievement and/or engagement after their first production of the gamified version of their class, as compared to earlier models they had used to teach the same material, and all looked forward to revising and offering an enhanced version of their gamified classes.

Bell looks to the work of Karl Kapp in the early 2010s to describe effective gamification. This approach emphasizes elements that make games enjoyable and how they can be incorporated to make learning more effective. He also draws from Csikszentmihalyi’s work in the last quarter of the twentieth century to describe the sensation of “flow,” which may serve as a proxy for engagement with class materials. He concludes the book with a new model to measure gamification, based on a combination of Kapp’s and Csikszentmihalyi’s models. He calls it the SIMPLE rubric, an acronym for “student intrinsic motivation for persistence in learning environments.” It was developed by his team during his work at Northeastern University in response to a need for a better tool to assess vendor products, especially as they related to engagement and success for students from at-risk demographics.

In addition to reducing fears of failure, the book focused extensively on the importance of timely feedback, ideally from the instructor, but also from peers or built into the system. This concept of frequent, supportive, and constructive feedback arose in each chapter and is difficult to achieve in every setting, gameful or not. Whether assessing knowledge via a game or an examination, delayed or nonexistent feedback diminishes the usefulness and learning potential of an assessment. With early and frequent feedback, misconceptions can be uncovered and corrected promptly, before further effort and incorrect understanding is built. If feedback occurs too late after the learning activity, it has less relevance to the learner and does not help support their understanding about the subject matter. 

Other recurrent elements of gamefulness throughout the scenarios in the book included appropriate levels of challenge, a good mix of competition, cooperation and conflict, clear goals and ease for students to get involved. Learners want to be able to understand the goals as well as the mechanics of the game system so they won’t be discouraged by the rules before engaging in the subject matter. Learners also tend to engage well with opportunities both to work in meaningful teams and to demonstrate individual or group excellence in various settings and with different challenges. As I work frequently with struggling students, these elements also resonated with my experience. For students that already dread school and its procedures, educational games need to be instantly accessible and provide opportunities for positive social interactions and early success. Without those attributes, the experience is just another occasion to be humiliated and isolated by their scholastic challenges. 

One of Bell’s interests is how these initial class forays into gamification might scale up to an entire academic program or department, or even be incorporated throughout a college or university. With over a decade of experience in instructional technology leadership roles at universities including Southern New Hampshire, Northeastern, and most recently, Western Sydney University, (LinkedIn) he could have written the book as a how-to manual and incorporated the case studies solely as illustrations of principle. Instead, he gave each class its own starring role in a chapter and used them as demonstrations of the diversity of approaches that various practitioners can create. His summation at the end of the book is that there is no single best way to add game elements to a course. In Game On!, dedicated instructors will discover a multitude of options and can use the ones that best fit their personality and goals, or find the inspiration and freedom to incorporate gamefulness in entirely new ways.   

Dr. Bell has extensive background in online education, including spearheading the massive expansion of Southern New Hampshire’s online and nonprofit degree program, called College for America several years ago (EDUCAUSE). This focus serves as a recurring theme throughout the book, as an evident driving objective is to improve quality and motivational aspects of online learning. Although three of the classes cited were primarily in-person formats, Bell made comparisons to how the gameful elements might be integrated into an online system. He asserts that enhanced online learning and massive open online courses (MOOCs) will be integral components of long-term efforts to make advanced learning accessible to all members of society. Due to possibilities for more impact with reduced costs, if online options can maintain good quality and an enthralling experience, they show promise. Gameful design may help achieve some of these goals, particularly in engaging students with more competing challenges in their lives. If learning feels less like a slog, it requires less mental energy and may more easily fit into a long day.

One chapter described a MOOC, designed with the gameful elements partially as a test of concept. Because MOOCs frequently have low completion rates, the instructor hoped to better sustain interest and participation through the addition of game elements. This MOOC had a slightly higher completion rate than average, though not so increased as to have statistical significance. The larger number of participants in a MOOC created the additional burden of prompt feedback from an instructor being even more difficult than in a traditional class setting, and demonstrated the importance of developing better systems, support, and perhaps more complex automation to make the gameful aspects sustainable in this setting.  

Despite his focus on online learning, Dr. Bell makes clear his belief that higher levels of technology are not required to make a more gameful experience. All of the systems described in his book started with minimal tech support. Given that most were created by an individual instructor operating in relative isolation, the classes were produced without the benefit of multiple designers or extensive access to technology systems. They were either implemented within the learning management system already used by the university or in even more basic settings, primarily through paper-and-pencil methods. The biggest drawback to these rudimentary settings consistently seemed to be the difficulties in providing the aforementioned vital and frequent feedback. In nearly every case, each instructor intended to create a system in the next iteration to automatize or increase support for higher levels of interaction with students through the mechanics of the game.   

Game On! left me inspired and eager to experiment in my work with students and library users. At just under 200 pages, and low on complicated terminology, it is an accessible read for anyone interested in ways to incorporate elements of their favorite game into a learning setting. The book is particularly valuable for its demonstration that gamefulness can be introduced by adapting existing concepts and games, rather than a need to create a system entirely from the ground up. With only five case studies and relatively minimal statistical analysis, the book is more a showcase of possibilities than a manual of best practices. As noted earlier, sample sizes in the classes were too small to make strong cases based on numerical results of the benefits of gamified classes versus their more traditional counterparts. To a certain extent, the book is written with an assumption that readers will already be interested in pursuing gamification, rather than to convince them of its value. However, the author also includes qualitative information, primarily gathered from class evaluations, providing support for gamification in the form of positive feedback from students, even when combined with criticisms of factors that needed improvement. Each chapter concluded with an interview with the featured instructor, describing lessons learned and plans for further innovation of their classes. Dr. Bell combines these indicators to support the assertion that students will likely appreciate any efforts an instructor may make to include gamefulness in their course. It is not necessary to design the next blockbuster game to engage students more effectively and produce better class experiences. An initial offering can be improved incrementally, and starting with something is better than waiting for perfection. In any case, the game is likely to need tweaking and improvement as it plays out, so involving learners in the process of refinement will create an even stronger product and learners that feel more agency in their education.

In an era of social isolation and increased dependence on internet learning and communication, I found this book particularly valuable for its encouragement to innovate initially in small ways. I find myself curious whether I can create a compelling scavenger hunt to invite library users to more fully explore the library website and find valuable resources. It is a large and exhaustive site, so there are pages that get missed, much like Easter eggs in video games and movie special features. We are also currently moving the summer reading program to an entirely online experience, and the book inspires me to learn a little more about the capabilities of the software to see if there are ways we can make it more gameful and engaging.

Game On! is a compelling and uplifting read. I have recommended it to multiple colleagues and will be thinking about the lessons learned as I consider existing game structures and their suitability for learning activities. The world is full of elegant games and enthralling settings. Let’s harness them to enhance learning in a world that is awash with information!  

Additional References:

• Bell, K. (n.d) Experience [LinkedIn page] Retrieved 4/18/2020 from https://www.linkedin.com/in/kbell14/. 
• EDUCAUSE (n.d.). Kevin Bell. Retrieved 4/16/2020 from https://members.educause.edu/kevin-bell-3.