Table 1 — Serious Games, Simulation, and Gamification Help Create Real World Outcomes Play Game Serious Game Simulation Gamification Spontaneous Yes No No No No Rules No Yes Yes Yes Yes Goals No Yes Yes Yes Yes Structured No Yes Yes Yes Yes Real World Outcome No No Yes/No Yes/No Yes In System No No No Yes/No Yes cation. Gamification is defined as the use of game thinking in nongame contexts to engage in problem solving. This sort of gaming is frequently used by companies through rewards tracking, incentives, number of days without accidents on the job, etc. These tools are of great interest because they are engaging and they increase students’ learning levels. The Education Arcade at Massachusetts Institute of Technology states that “game players regularly exhibit persistence, risk taking, attention to detail, and problem solving, all behaviors that ideally would be regularly demonstrated and encouraged in school.” In fact, 70% of teachers said that using educational video games increases student engagement in their classes (Ref. 1). As depicted in Table 1 (Ref. 2), research shows that there are three types of technology engagement that can help create real-world outcomes while engaging and teaching users with goals, rules, and structured content: serious games, gamification, and simulations. These engagement tools provide help for job-specific training and many CTE areas are implementing them for engagement while educating. One such area of CTE is welding. The important thing to remember when talking about engagement is not to use technology for technology’s sake, but how to use it to achieve the outcomes you are looking for, like creating a career-ready workforce. By changing the way technology is used in the classroom, preconceived notions about the use of games in education can be changed as well. For the first time in the history of technology in education, the teacher may actually be the learner. After all, today’s students are digital natives, having always lived in the world of this technology. They don’t know of a time when phones had cords, televisions were not flat, and the Internet didn’t exist; they have grown to expect advanced technologies to lead them into their careers. The older teachers come from a different background, one that might make working with technologically savvy students a challenging experience. It shouldn’t be. Teachers are still in the business of empowering student learning, and can do so by using their generational knowledge of student’s learning styles to create new ways to teach. Let the students be the teachers and learning will continue to take place. Engagement can really take off when students see the advantage of using technology to make learning more meaningful. Serious games and gamification are ways to create those learning opportunities. For instance, educators could use gamification for students to gain badges or points for exhibiting skills and behaviors that align with those needed for a specific career. In a welding lab, badges or certificates could be earned when students master certain positions or coupon types. By using badges to assist in skill development, students are motivated, held to standards, and rewarded. This concept doesn’t take a lot of extra time for the instructor, but it can help gain serious dividends in student proficiency. Another way to utilize serious games and gamification in the welding lab is through welding simulation. In the past decade, welding simulation has become an increasingly accepted tool for training. Not only is there a decrease in consumable costs, but students become more engaged in learning with this type of technology. The great part of this learning method is the opportunity for a symbiotic learning relationship where the students learn about welding from their instructors and the instructors learn about technology from the students. One such example for welding education is Realityworks’ guideWELD™ VR welding simulator (Fig. 1), which features an interactive software program and welding simulation hardware. It allows students to gain insight into their welding technique by scoring them on proper or improper welding techniques like work angle, travel angle, speed, and nozzle-to-plate dis- Fig. 1 — A screenshot of guideWELD™ VR, an example of gamification in the welding industry. APRIL 2015 / WELDING JOURNAL 49 Generational Learners
Welding Journal | April 2015
To see the actual publication please follow the link above