Can Games and Badges Motivate College Students to Learn?

http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2015/04/20/can-games-and-badges-motivate-college-students-to-learn/

Daervasi defines gamfication as “the addition of reward systems to non-game settings and contexts.”

see other definition for gamification from
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims/files/2015/03/Gaming-and-Gamification-in-academic-and-library-settings-final-draft-1digudu.pdf

Gamification takes game elements (such as points, badges, leaderboards, competition, and achievements) and applies them to a non-game setting. It has the potential to turn routine, mundane tasks into refreshing, motivating experiences (What is GBL (Game-Based Learning)?, n.d.).

Gamification is defined as the process of applying game mechanics and game thinking to the real world to solve problems and engage users (Phetteplace & Felker, 2014, p. 19; Becker, 2013, p. 199; Kapp, 2012). Gamification requires three sets of principles: 1. Empowered Learners, 2. Problem Solving, 3. Understanding (Gee, 2005).

Some authors, e.g. Malykhina (2014), fail to make the distinction between games and gamification in the educational process and attribute gamification to the influx of games in the curricula, rather than to the application of game elements as defined above or constrain the definition ascribing only reward system to learning settings and contexts (Darvasi, 2015).

An excellent outline and historical and bibliographic overview of games and gamification in their learning context was recently published by Liu and Santhanam (2015). As per Liu & Santhanam (2015), there are certain “commonalities between gamification and other game-related designs, but they differ in terms of whether they are predominantly work-oriented (versus play-oriented) and whether they have well defined goals and structures” (p. 6). They also offer a useful framework, describing the roles of different gamification design elements.