Meaningful Gamification 1

Meaningful Gamification in Government

Gary Sullivan

Towson University
Gamified Economics 2

Introduction

For my final project, I chose to meaningfully gamify my classroom for the Economics

portion of American Government. I based a lot of my decisions and activities on Nicholson’s

RECIPE for Meaningful Gamification. This paper is basically just an overview of the concepts

associated with the design process as I spent an ungodly amount of time actually making all the

materials and lessons. I strongly feel that Nicholson is one of the few readings I really connected

with throughout this graduate program and that’s mostly due to the quantifier MEANINGFUL in

front of gamification. I know I’ve gone on rants in the past about how it’s a meaningless term but

when presented and done correctly like I feel like he outlines in his paper I can tolerate using it.

Creating lessons using gamification techniques in a meaningful way is exactly what I want to do

with my students so I feel like I had to base my final project on his paper.

Audience – The audience of this unit is 9th graders in my American Government class at

Edgewood High School in Harford County. As I created it to be used in my own classroom next

year, it needs to work for a diverse group of students. I teach kids anywhere from 13-21 years

old, with reading levels from 2nd grade to college level. There are multiple different ways

activities throughout the unit have been differentiated. Before I implement this next year I am

going to work with my co-teacher who is the special educator to chunk some of the material, as

well as create additional options for special education needs such as annotated text, etc.

Definition of the Problem - The problem I faced when designing this unit was twofold. First, I

needed to address issues I have had in my actual classroom, so I was not doing all this work just

for this class. My students really seem to struggle with the complicated and unfamiliar concepts
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associated with economics, and I have noticed significant differences in test scores between

units. I fully intend to teach this unit as is now in my government classes next year, so I made a

lot of changes related to increasing engagement using games. I spent a ton of time working on

this over two weeks so I needed proper motivation. Additionally, I needed to make sure I was

addressing those needs through meaningful gamification processes that have been shown to

work. That is why I went back to one of the better articles I read this semester about meaningful

gamification to use as a guide when making these lessons.

Goals & Objectives – The stated goal for this unit is to teach economic concepts relevant to

students as they need to pass the Government HAS, while incorporating meaningful gamification

in order to increase knowledge retention through increased engagement. I wanted to do this in a

way that would be practical considering the technological limitations I face at my current place

of employment as well. Additionally, I wanted the lessons to be as equitable for all students as

possible.

Implementation - Meaningful gamification has been implemented throughout the design of all

of this unit according to Nicholson’s RECIPE for Meaningful Gamification. The six elements

considered when designing the unit were as follows:

• Play – facilitating the freedom to explore and fail within boundaries

• Exposition – creating stories for participants that are integrated with the real-world setting and

allowing them to create their own

• Choice – developing systems that put the power in the hands of the participants
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• Information – using game design and game display concepts to allow participants to learn more

about the real-world context

• Engagement – encouraging participants to discover and learn from others interested in the real-

world setting

• Reflection – assisting participants in finding other interests and past experiences that can

deepen engagement and learning.

Here’s how each element was considered in the development of the unit lessons.

Play – This one was the simplest to consider when creating the content for these lessons as the

essence of the stock market simulation is that you can do a bunch of research and make informed

decisions and still lose money due to market conditions outside of your control. Students can lose

money because of there being no real safeguards to the simulation. In one lesson, students can

run out of money and lose when playing SPENT and have to restart. Possibility of failure in my

anecdotal experience means students are motivated more to succeed and will expend more effort

in order to not lose.

Exposition – Students are introduced to the simulation through a fictional scenario where they

have access to funds they normally would not and given incentive to see these funds grow. As

such, my goal is that they take the simulation seriously and attempt to make the best and most

informed choices. I believe these types of gamified simulation scenarios will create a variety of

interesting and meaningful stories for students that they can think back on in the years to come.

Choice – This unit has a variety of choices made available to students. My favorite is the game

SPENT where players have to choose betweens different hard choices, like affording food or
Gamified Economics 5

buying their children a pass to go on a field trip. It really hits home with a lot of my kids when

scenarios like buy your kid new shoes or let them get made fun of by peers get presented because

I feel like a lot of them have been in a similar situation and they are looking at it from a different

viewpoint, analyzing finances and seeing if they have enough money for bills and rent. It really

makes them appreciate the sacrifices mom and dad make for them and I’ve had several people

acknowledge and verbalize that to me when I used it in a different context so I think it’s a great

little lesson.

Information – I believe strongly that incorporating the stock market game is the best possible

meaningful gamification element you could have for this category. Nicholson says that

information is about giving a kid real world context, and what could be more real then making

investments that could determine the path of your future. I can almost guarantee that kids who

make a profit investing in the stock market walk away with thoughts about their future

investment portfolio and it’s due almost entirely to the context surrounding this simulation.

Similarly, I wouldn’t be shocked to see kids who lost almost all or all of their investment start up

money hesitate to do so in the future with their actual own money to this.

Engagement - This is the main reason I chose to work within this framework for my final

project. I felt like all the previous aspects add up to an increased amount of engagement

compared to what I was doing previously when teaching economics. I think the various game

scattered throughout this unit that I have redesigned will provide enough meaningful engagement

to successfully retain enough of my students attention that it will increase their unit assessment

scores and ultimately help them pass the MD High School Assessment. I know I have had to

proctor that test several times in the last few years and while the economics section isn’t the
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longest, it’s still relevant. Doing anything I can to get these students to remember this higher

level section on the test is worth it in the long run for me.

Reflection – A lot of the reflection being done in this unit is going to be based around the

presentation and peer evaluation portion at the end. Students are expected to evaluate their peers

based on the presentations they make and determine whether sufficient research and evaluation

was done before making investments into various stocks. Additionally, their end of unit

presentation must include a cash out or continue option, as well as commentary on how confident

they would feel investing real money into a similar situation.

Assessment – There are a variety of assessment measures built into this unit. Instead of a

traditional unit assessment like I have used in the past, the summative portion of the grade for

this unit will be the presentation given by each student group detailing their investment strategy

and results associated with the stock market game simulation. Additionally, peer review scores

and teacher determination of effort by each group member will be reflected in the final grade.

Just losing money in the stock market sim does not necessarily mean the group will receive a bad

score. If it was easy for anyone to make money on the stock market I’d be doing it right now!

Supporting Documents - Please find attached to this submitted document 8 days worth of

Activinspire files and associated docx worksheets, as well as a pdf document with cut outs,

instructions, etc for the game Econoland. I did not want to put 100 slides worth of material into

the end of this document.

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References

Nicholson, S. (2012). A user-Centered theoretical framework for meaningful

gamification GamesþLearningþSociety 8.0. Available at: http://scottnicholson.com/pubs/

meaningfulframework.pdf