In this 15 minute video, Tom Chatfield makes compelling arguments on how lessons learned from gaming can be applied to education and other fields. His 7 lessons are :
- Measuring constant progress, giving learners chances to constantly progress and showing that progress visually using experience bars.
- Have multiple long and short term aims.
- Reward effort constantly, even for trying and failing.
- Feedback needs to be rapid, frequent and clear.
- Elements of uncertainty enhance our natural motivation.
- We can find windows of enhanced attention when learners are more likely to retain information and gain confidence.
- Other people. People like doing stuff with peers and collaborating, as a reward in itself.
A colleague pointed out to me that many of the points about effective gaming overlap with seven principles for good practice for undergraduate education.
