In a Gamified Classroom, Work Should Be Public

WIth the exception of solitare-style games, all games are played in groups and in some form of public sphere. While there's a quantitative difference between playing Zertz against a single opponent, Dominion against three or playing World of Warcraft while being a member of its largest guild, there is no qualitative difference. In every case, your play is observed, assessed and analyzed by someone else. The flow of the game is dependent on the decisions you make and your opponents responses. In every case, other players can learn from your decisions and change their play accordingly. 

In two-player games like Zertz, chess and Go, this is one of the keys to success. To what extend can you read your opponent's play, adjust your own accordingly, and learn not the rules but the strategic principles that undergird the game? In multi-player games, the same ideas pertain, but added to them are social dynamics and complex interactions between the social, the game's rules and the player's decisions. In massively multi-player games the social dynamic, and the ability to learn from dozens, hundreds or thousands of other players, becomes the framework in which everything you do in character takes place.

In the gamified classroom, these ideas take on additional importance. Work should, to the extent possible, be public. Why?

All Can Benefit: If student work is public, every other student can benefit from it (and not just the students in your gamified classroom...if your students' work is truly public and available to students across the world, it's an even greater benefit). Hardly any learning is done in isolation from learning, knowledge or wisdom that came before it. Furthermore, 21^st century society, with its pace of rapid evolution and sometimes bewildering change, depends on everyone's learning being aggregated and assessed to solve problems. Students need this experience to become the adult leaders in our society.

More Eyes? Fewer Errors: In the gamified classroom where work is public, the error rate should be much less. As students investigate their colleagues' work, flaws in fact or thinking will emerge and be corrected. Students become a bit like detectives and as they gain expertise, they gain critical appraisal and critiquing skills.

It's More Exciting: Students know that if their work is public that anyone could look at it and critique it. There's a sense of personal pride in work that is put out in the public sphere. Students want that work to be well regarded...they don't want to make big mistakes in public. As they prepare work for sharing, this leads to greater attention to detail.

It Can Generate Spontaneity: Below is a diagram a student made in class to draw connections between Technology KT level 1 (10 technologies that made the modern world) and Technology KT level 2 (show 4 relationships between them). The student could have done anything. He chose to do this work in public. I worked with him, his classmates made suggestions, he corrected himself. And when he was done, I asked him a series of questions to ensure that he understood what he thought he understood. He was authorized to level 3.