Back in 2011, I wrote some thoughts on gamification that I thought I’d return to sooner. Fourteen years later, here we are. Back then my view was mixed, leaning negative. Now? Still mixed. Maybe less negative, maybe even tilting toward the positive. I would not call myself a fan of gamification, but I have found myself using it, or at least thinking about my teaching through that lens.
Read MoreBut what if we stopped treating shortcuts as failure and started designing for multiple kinds of play? When I play a video game, I am a casual gamer. I move through the story, enjoy the world, and never bother collecting all the trophies. Other players are completists, tracking down every secret and grinding every stat. Who is better? Neither. If the casual gamer enjoys the game and the hardcore gamer does too, then both are playing "right." The point was never to check every box. It was to engage.
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