CONCEPTS IN GAMIFICATION AND NARRATIVE IN ASSESSMENT AND LEARNING

By David Moore, Academic Coordinator and Lecturer in Film and Television, Higher Colleges of
Technology, Abu Dhabi Womens College. Alumni of the Australias Melbourne University,
prestigious Victoria College of the Arts, (VCA) School of Film and Television, member of the Abu
Dhabi International Film Festival (ADFF) Pre-Selection Committee
ABSTRACT
Gamification is taking the mechanics and dynamics of game environments and applying them to
non-game activities (Cohen 2012) and Gartner group predicts that 50% of all innovation and 70%
of all global 2000s apps will be gamified by 2015 (Zichermann 2011). It may well be a hot topic at
the moment, but is it applicable to teaching and assessment? We are now teaching a new generation
of digital natives (Palfrey and Gasser 2008) and growing evidence shows that we need to adapt to
the changing classroom. There is debate about the merits of applying gamification to education,
teaching and assessment and whether this is just another guise of Edutainment, which has it
distractors. Alternatively, whether we, as educators, can create tailor made, gamified experiences
that are valid assessments in the classrooms is to be seen, but this paper highlights the various
arguments and discussion of experts in the field of gamification and I propose and discuss the
inclusion of the tool of Narrative as a valid mode of delivery, conflated with gamification, to
envisage what may very well be a successful model for teaching and assessment in the classroom.
INTRODUCTION
In an age where teachers vacillate between the needs and wants of our students in the ongoing
struggle for student attention, whether deserved or required, and where we become distracted by
arguments that, as teachers we now need to entertain rather than educate, terms like edutainment are
bandied around with academics stating I dont like edutainment (Resnick 2004) and other asking
Can one mix a game with a lesson and produce a valuable educational tool? (Hogle 1996)
Although Edutainment is not the primary focus of my paper on the topic of Gamification and
Narrative, it is an imperative that needs addressing and I suggest that the conflation of all three
modes becomes more obvious as a successful model for application.
The phenomenon of games, where target audiences spend countless hours building skills and
knowledge through the advent of game playing whereby; This cultural phenomena, where people
are paying for a long, hard and a difficult thing, that has to be successful in teaching them to play it
(Gee 2012) surely compels us to examine the unpinning theories and applications of the massively
successful model of game playing.
How can we as educators, derive and apply concepts and theories of Gamification, conflated with
Edutainment and Narrative to create valid and successful assessments?
The application of Gamification and the implication of a narrative structure within this context is
the focus of this paper. I suggest that the successful culmination of theories of Gamification,
Narrative and Edutainment is both a valid and a creative way in which to achieve success in both
formative and summative assessments in, and out of the classroom.
Firstly some clarification; Gamification is not just the application of computer art, narrative and
wizardry to a games console or mobile device, as this paper will serve to advise, but rather it is the
act of taking the mechanics and dynamics of game environments and applying them to non-game
activities (Cohen 2012).
In disseminating trending within Gamification, research quickly points to the rapid growth of the
entertainment software industry, which has exceeded by 10% growth between the years 2005 to
2009, when compared to the U.S economy for the same period that only grew at a rate less than 2%.
(http://www.theesa.com/facts/econdata.asp accessed 8 June 2012).
Gamification may well have been an overused buzz word (Chang 2012) in 2010/11, but
Techcrunch.com reported gamification is expanding beyond media and fitness, with the next target
verticals including education. Along with growing statistics revealing that female on-line game
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players are now 130 million to men at 140 million (Mason 2012), along with emerging Middle
Eastern markets that already recognize young women as one of the largest potential targets, proves
this platform is already a manifesto of media that students are comfortable with. However there is
authentic research demonstrating gamification has measurable results in its application to education.
Here are some basic, yet engaging figures to imply the significance of the gaming industry and why
as educators we must take notice:
1. Consumers spent $24.75 billion on video games, hardware and accessories in 2011 in the
United States.
2. The average U.S. household owns at least one dedicated game console, PC or smartphone.
3. The average game player is between the ages of 18 to 30 years old and has been playing
games for 12 years.
4. The average age of the most frequent game purchaser is 35 years old.
5. Forty-seven percent of all game players are women. In fact, women over the age of 18
represent a significantly greater portion of the game-playing population (30 percent) than
boys age 17 or younger (18 percent).
6. Sixty-two percent of gamers play games with others, either in-person or online.
7. Thirty-three percent of gamers play games on their smartphones, and 25 percent play games
on their handheld device.
8. Seventy-three percent of all games sold in 2011 were rated "E" for Everyone, "T" for Teen,
or "E10+" for Everyone 10+.
9. Parents are present when games are purchased or rented 90 percent of the time.
Now distinguish this to the Joan Ganz Cooney Center who collaborated with BrainPOP in a survey
of teachers who use digital platforms and games within the classroom
(http://www.theesa.com/facts/econdata.asp accessed 8 June 2012).
32 percent of teachers surveyed report using digital games in the classroom 2-4 days per
week and 18 percent use games every day.
70 percent of teachers agree that using digital games increases lower-performing students
motivation and engagement with curriculum.
60 percent of teachers say that using digital games helps them personalize instruction, better
assess knowledge, and collect helpful data for lower-performing students.
60 percent of teachers say all of their students have become better collaborators and have
increased attention to specific tasks since incorporating digital games into their lesson
plans.
By examining the above figures we can see a correlation between entertainment games platforms,
gamification and education, but the dissemination seems to be more vertically based rather than
horizontal.
The pollinizations of the different levels seems currently limited. Therefore video game playing
may be used extensively in the classroom as a potent tool for teaching and assessment, but the
application of the concepts of Gamification and Narrative is not necessarily so, and there appears to
be 3 distinct hemispheres where there is little cross-over. I will distinguish between the similar, but
different regions.
The purpose of this paper is to explore the contextualization of the concepts of Gamification, the
integration of the theories of Edutainment and solicitation of narrative for teachers, in achieving
their goals within the application to both formative and summative assessments.
There are three parts to this paper:
Part One: Gamification is not just about games but rather a system of engendering building positive
emotion through reward;
Part Two: Edutainment, integration with Gamification and Agency, and;

Part 3: Narrative is the structure to bind the experience of Gamification and Edutainment and
framework to support the knowledge and the reward within.
As a writer and filmmaker it is legitimate for me to discuss examples by others and my own
proposed application of a design and media Cinematography game, by presenting the context and
disseminating of what is Gamification and how the use of narrative can be a powerful tool in the
cognitive reconciliation of student learning.
METHODS
Part 1: Gamification is not just gaming playing; its about positive emotion and reward
Developing skills, earning points and building abilities whilst in the act of game playing is
customary, but mastery of those skills and moving towards the culmination of the games axis is also
deeply rewarding for the game player.
But as Cohen argues, in education it is actually the reverse. The assessment criteria and rubric have
a scale that defines levels of achievement in assessment, so every term you start with a mythical
perfect score that every transgression or failure, chips away at. This is demotivating at best. (Cohen,
2012).
This is also prevalent when addressing specific educational issues to the Gulf region, in particular,
to that of rote behavior amongst learners in the UAE .1, because of the past educational approaches
in secondary schooling leaves little room for students, except a straight-forward approach to their
learning. Traditional methods to assessment means students are often penalized for thinking outside
of their paradigm, because this approach involves a variety of different assessment tools and
individual grading, which is problematic for time poor teachers. (Cohen, 2012) but perfect for
building into a game, which uses levels to qualify different skill sets of leaners.
Gamification, has already been identified as the application of points and leaderboards as a system
of rewards to any application, in our case, Education. But what is important is the application of the
rewards system as it relates to games in teaching and assessment.
Applying rewards is not a new concept by any means, teachers have used leader boards and
award/reward systems in the classroom for decades, but here we are talking about the culmination
of Games with learning, engendering positive emotion and reward targeted to the appropriate
audience members.
Amy Jo Kim, the CEO of Shufflebrain, a design studio dedicated smart games states that: Learning
is the driving tool of a game (Silverman, 2012).
Games engender positive emotion in people and need to visually show how players progress and
where they are headed in the game in order to be a successful game.
All games can be placed into four categories known as the Bartles player types (Bartle 1996), which
are; Achievers, Killers, Socializers and Explorers. Bartle's preliminary model serves as a foundation
on which to understand underlying motivations and the cognizing of where the 4 types may overlap,
but the reality of it is that the very successful points systems really only appeal to the Bartles
achievers in this hypothesis.
What needs to happen is that all players are engaged into the core engagement loop using
P.E.R.M.A (Positive Emotions Relationships Meaning Accomplishment) (Kim 2012)
P.E.R.M.A, is in itself, a self fulfilling model, where participants need to see visual progress through
leaderboards and/or awards, this engenders the players with a sense of achievement, which is then
supported through social activities (outside of the classroom) via websites (facebook and twitter)
and finally the re-engagement of the participant via new challenges.

In early 2008, the UAEs Ministry of Education launched a Mentoring Programme which assigns Western principals to
50 of 735 public schools across the UAE in an effort to modernize instructional strategies and implement Western
methods of learning. Participating instructors emphasize necessity of deviating from the traditional methods of passive
memorization and rote learning instead of encouraging active student participation.

Kim reports: What happens over time is whats known as a reinforcement schedule in behavioral
psychology, meaning that these patterns when reinforced with differentiation over a period of time
can become very addictive and games designers are aware of this potential (Carry 2012).
This is why one of the main reasons in the success of Gamification is simply human chemistry in its
response to the P.E.R.M.A loop.
Every time you are successful you have a small measure of dopamine (Zichermann 2011) enter into
your brain, essentially this makes you feel good! For example; when youre on facebook and your
status is LIKED, or you receive feedback on your instagram photos, the participant gets a shot of
endorphin into the brain and subsequently we LIKE this and go back for more.
This then relates back to participant Intrinsic values (for example: belonging, autonomy, mastery,
power, fun, love, self-knowledge and learning) versus their extrinsic values (for example: achieving
gold stars, points, leaderboards, points and prizes) (Kim 2012).
This essentially is why Gamification is so euphoric to the new age business. Also, its been
scientifically proven that there are 5 key tasks to increasing a persons Fluid Intelligence
(Zichermann 2011), they are:
1) Seek novelty
2) Challenge Yourself
3) Think Creatively
4) Do things the hard way
5) Network
As Zicherman encourages us to understand Does this not sound like how a video game works?
(Zichermann 2011). These game mechanics, P.E.R.M.A, the engagement loop, levels and points are
all important aspects of Gamification and companies like Shufflebrain and Bunchball have
successfully exploited these concepts, basic human psychology and through websites, managed to
cajole millions of people into implicitly building brands, whether they are aware of this or not, so
the question is, why, as educators, arent we using these same technqiues?
Some of us are already!
Cohen gives example of how American University Professor Lee Sheldon used game design to
build a model of an awards system of points. Sheldon reported everything from course completion
to hand-in times to class attendance went up as the students saw the results tallied up over the
semester (Carry 2012). Cohen repeated similar results with his students.
Part 2: Edutainment and its integration with Gamification
Edutainment was a term that was first used in the 90s, and has been around for sometime, in the
form of childrens books and later childrens television shows and movies. It was presented as the
solution to the anathema of Education (http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-edutainment.htm access 4
December 2012).
Educators have long debated on the benefits of Edutainment, with some arguing that its more about
amusing students than educating and is purely there to sell a product invented by marketers.
So why dont I like edutainment? The problem is with the way that creators of todays
edutainment products tend to think about learning and education. Too often, they view
education as a bitter medicine that needs the sugar-coating of entertainment to become
palatable. They provide entertainment as a reward if you are willing to suffer through a
little education. Or they boast that you will have so much fun using their products that you
wont even realize that you are learning as if learning were the most unpleasant
experience in the world. (Resnick 2000).
Resnick goes on to argue that Edutainment views its recipients as passive whereas learners are
anything but passive, rather an active participant. One of the problems with Edutainment software
is that there is little variance in the approach to levels, this is known as Agency. What that means is
that Gamers have the ability to affect change within the gaming environment to achieve better

results, by choosing better tools or strategies to suit their learner style and advancement, for
example by choosing a better weapon or purchasing a faster engine. For Cohen (2012) this is
Agency.
With the increase of game playing and gamers, so does the institution of agency improve, with
players now having many avenues to choose from, particularly in RPG (Role Player Games)
By instituting Agency within a variety of challenges to suit different learner styles and levels,
gamification not only encourages, but supports students lateral methodologies that could serve to
improve students in cognitive approaches to their studies on a variety of levels (Cohen 2012).
In Edutainment, currently Agency is not well addressed. There tends to be a one size fits all
approach supporting Resnicks argument. But the same could be argued in our approach to
teaching, time poor teachers having variety of learner levels and styles (particularly prevalent to
teaching in the Gulf Region) meaning teachers also apply a one size fits all approach.
As Cohen reiterates, the solution is straight forward, by splitting assessment in sections and
allowing students several options to each section you are addressing Agency. This creates an
assessment which combines choice with a more bounded way of teaching thus giving the teacher
different contingencies for assessment and measuring student knowledge and understanding (Cohen
2012). In a game we call this LEVELS. Games and Education scholar, James Gee supports this
perspective by iterating that its logical for a student to be tested for a 12 week Algebra class but if a
student was to play the game Halo for 40 hours, would we need to give them a Halo test? No! The
game has already tested them. Gee calls this situated and embodied learning meaning a student is
not just being taught inert knowledge, rather using facts and information as tools for problem
solving in a specific context and solving the problem. (Gee 2011)
The other aspect of gamification and gaming that is also important to discuss is the inclusion of the
strong social component to ALL aspects of gaming. No longer is gaming a solitary device, gamers
will and must interact with their peers by the online playing (communicating via skype whilst
playing together on the same game mode) and the publishing on leaderboards and awards for all to
see. By communicating and playing with each, they are using peer review, assessing challenges,
interactivity, choice and cogent behaviors to achieve taskstogether.
Part 3: Narrative is the structure to bind the experience of Gamification and Edutainment
within a framework to support the knowledge and the reward.
Narrative is the exploration of known facts through fictional usage. Again, this is not a new concept
to Educators; using narrative to teach life stories, Grimms Fairytales and The Tale of Peter and the
Wolf (by example) are all chronicles that teach life lessons and important ones. Narrative, as a
teaching medium has been utilized throughout history and its application has been applied to
mythology and story-telling successfully, to teach generations about life and culture, traditionally
through oral story telling, books and movies.
Games and storytelling serve an important role in childrens development (Piaget, 1999).
Youths spend hours playing games and given Kims hypothesis of reinforcement in behavioral
psychology as previously disclosed, this explains the behaviors we see in gamers with their return
to gaming time and time again, but I argue that what cradles the experience is the addition of
compelling narrative embedded within the game. The more appealing the narrative WITH the other
elements, the more successful that game is to its target audiences.
If games are to be at once fun for gamers and taken seriously as art, two things need to
happen. On the one hand, that elusive balance between gameplay and narrative needs to be
struck; on the other hand, film-quality writing, acting, and cinematics need to flesh out the
story (Kain, 2012).
But when we successfully combine a good narrative with gamification within a context, be that
called Edutainment or just a great game! You have a winner. Some still argue there has not been a
good game since Where in the World is Carmen Sandiago. This is because teachers, parents and
student uniformly agree that it a great learners game (Zichermann 2011).

Needless to say, there is much that could be discussed and argued on this area, but note the success
of games (in sales as discussed) look at the success of Television and movies, all of these award
winning products have one cogent element, they have a successful narrative.
Games can tell great stories. But because games are so heavily dependent on
participation, things like pacing are more important than ever. You cant just write a good
story, you have to figure out how to weave the story into the gameplay (Kain, 2012).
Conflate this with assessment strategies and the suitable aspects of gamification, the mounting
oratory discourse and scholarly research, leaves us with the valid question: Why are we not using
gamification as a valid tool for teaching and assessment in the classroom more?
our expectations and traditional methods of assessment may need a change of
perspective. In particular gaming may be an effective tool for teaching disadvantaged
students whose language skills are not well developed (Hogle 1996).
RESULTS
By utilizing the potency of Narrative within Gamification (which games designers have already
successfully accomplish) appeals to a generation of students who want to be entertained rather than
educated (edutainment). I examine this now with my own game concept for a cinematography
game, and the difference that is made to the concept, by adding a narrative, which enhances the
precepts of the games to its target audience.
This game, aptly entitled isee is only in its planning stages, but utilizes the mode of ipad delivery
to effectively teach students the theory of using a video camera. The aim of the game is to compose,
frame and light (in both indoor and in outdoor settings) and subsequently shoot a person
appropriately, then assessed by pre-set parameters on successful image capture, that the participant
has complied with the assignment.
Utilizing the precepts of knowledge discussed in this paper, the aspect of gamification that are to be
employed within the game will be a series of status badges and ranking for the success or failure of
the student to properly compose and execute a shot. The concept is that this can than be linked to
status icons, such as facebook or twitter to achieve the social status students are seeking. The final
aspect is the application of narrative to this game.
isee is introduced to the student via a video log that explains that you are an up and coming
cinematographer, your assignments are ranked in order of challenge. Students will be presented
with a virtual environment in which they start by videoing a local news anchorman, within a TV
studio, and work their way up (or down) the chain of succession to finally achieve videoing
someone as important as Brad Pitt and ultimately, President Obama.
The other narrative aspect planned, which uniformly ties into gamification, is that you will earn an
income that is commensurate with the level of expertise you attain. Obviously, the higher up the
chain, the higher the salary, which means you climb up the leaderboard, which will obviously be
connected to your peers via the internet.
By educational standards this game can be coined under the term Edutainment, but it utilizes
Agency to appeal to the different learner levels, it achieves the goals of teaching the student the
assessable event, it fulfills the social yearning and the satisfaction that is so crucial to the current
generation, and ultimately it is fun!
CONCLUSIONS
Gamification is on the path to being endemic in its application to virtually any and all aspects of
consumerism.
Gartner group predicts that 50% of all innovation and 70% of all global 2000s apps will be
gamified by 2015 (Zichermann 2011). Many experts, both industry and educational experts are
becoming convinced of the inclusiveness of these aspects of technology and its inherent application
to teaching and assessment. It is achievable, but the last hurdle seems to be the fiscal response to
gamifying education.

Even my own precept of a game would be expensive and time consuming to design, market and
package in a form that is digestible, and even then, how does it stand out in the sea of apps already
available. The challenges are great.
As teachers we need to scaffold this knowledge back down to achievable basics, such as the primary
school teacher Anath Pi, who replaced his teaching curriculum with a video game based delivery. In
his class, Pi separated the learning styles of each child, utilizing standard video games platforms,
consoles, devices and games that appealed to the individual students learning style, to teach math
and language. Pis response was noteworthy, in an experiment 18 weeks in duration his students
went from a below 3rd grade level in reading and math to a mid 4th grade level in those subject areas
(Zichermann 2011).
When we consider that students are now considered digital natives and we, the digital dinosaurs to
this new frontier, and until these natives develop their own digital language and media
opportunities for theirs and new generations, Gamifying, edutainment and narrative is the
opportunity to develop cohesive units in application teaching and assessment. There is growing
evidence of success, but development is in early phases, we are just yet to see many examples of it
on the app store.
REFERENCES
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Zichermann, Gabe: How games make kids smarter Ted Talks (2011)
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2012
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Thank you to Josephine Butler, for her valuable assistance in the development of this paper, and Dr.
Cathy Cavanaugh for continual her support in my research.