Gamification & Serious Games

I tried out a serious game called 3rd World Farmer. I played the game twice and found it to be easy to navigate. Some of the other serious games I tried out were much more difficult to figure out, had more rules to learn and required a more extensive vocabulary. For this reason I think this game could be good for an EFL classroom. I might employ this in an EFL classroom as an autonomous learning tool for students. I think it could be paired with a unit on finances, the condition of farmers in developing countries and farming vocabulary.

My learning objectives would be for students to recognize farming vocabulary, to practice making financial decisions and to be able to make observations about the life of a farmer in a developing country. The students would be responsible for playing the game on their own. In order to assess that the learning objectives had been met I would ask the students to write two short observational paragraphs about their experience. I would ask them to include details of the game they played utilizing farming vocabulary, details of the financial decisions they had to make and their observations on the life of a farmer in a developing country.

Gamification in the EFL Classroom

According to Educause gamification is the application of game-like elements in non-game situations. The intension is to increase interest, motivation and participation. Stephan J. Franciosi discusses how using games in an educational setting can contribute to students' intrinsic motivation to learn. He defines Flow as a mental state where a person experiences the challenge of a task/game which is neither too easy or too hard. Flow Theory has three components which support the use of games, they are: goals, feedback and skill/difficulty balance. If a game has these three components then it is likely to increase students' experience of Flow and engagement and thereby increase intrinsic motivation.

I played an escape the room game named The Great Kitchen Escape. I played the game three times. If I were to utilize this game in class my learning objectives would be that students would be able to identify kitchen vocabulary items through listening to directions, they would be able to follow commands given by the teacher reading the walkthrough, and they would be able to recognize prepositions for the location of items in the game. I would most likely have the students work in groups of two depending on the size of the class and the number of computers available. I would write out a script for the walkthrough using kitchen vocabulary, command words and prepositions of place/location and read it to the students as they played the game. Throughout the game playing process I would carry out comprehension checks to make sure the students were understanding the vocabulary, commands and prepositions. As a follow-up to the activity I would make a worksheet with screenshot images from the game for the students to identify the vocabulary, commands and prepositions that were used.