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Cheating Gamification

Gamification of learning has lead some to raise concerns. There are those who believe that students will eventually cease to be motivated by genuine learning goals, instead only motivated by the “external rewards” (Lee and Hammer, 2011) that can be earned. Others fear that traditional textbooks will no longer exist once gamified learning methods dominate every lesson, with students not interested in a media that offers no feedback, interaction or achievements.

A third worry is that the use of game techniques will lead to students benefiting from inflated performance as they learn how to beat the game or worse, cheat.

As Andrzej Marczewski (2014) discovered, gamification can have positive effects to a learning resource. As well as engaging existing students, online learning applications that utilise gamification can find that visitors are being drawn to experience primarily because they find the game-like elements enjoyable. These visitors then start learning and absorbing the educational content almost like an accidental by-product.

In Marczewski’s case, some users learnt how to cheat the system and started building up huge points scores and dominating the public leaderboards. By this point, the gamification has been completely derailed from its purpose and not only is it failing to motivate users to learn, but learning has been removed from the experience altogether.

 

References:

Lee, J. and Hammer, J. (2011). Gamification in Education: What, How, Why Bother?. 1st ed. [ebook] Teachers College Columbia University, NY. Available at: https://www.uwstout.edu/soe/profdev/resources/upload/Lee-Hammer-AEQ-2011.pdf  [Accessed 17 Jan. 2016].

Marczewski, A. (2014). Gamification: Overjustification Effect and Cheating. [online] Gamified UK. Available at: http://www.gamified.uk/2014/01/06/gamification-overjustification-effect-cheating/ [Accessed 24 Jan. 2016].