Dr Simon Katan, Director of Undergraduate Studies, recently published this Medium post on the gamification of learning. We reprint it here.<\/b><\/p>\n\n\n\n
When I was 14 I took my French GCSE. My French teacher, Madame Percival, had studied the exam and mark scheme intricately. She taught us just the right grammatical constructions to achieve the highest marks. \u2018Au bord de la mer\u2019<\/em> was worth a particularly high number of marks, so we were all to use this phrase as much as possible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In my exam I stitched together these little memorised passages to score maximum points \u2014 \u2018Hier soir, je suis all\u00e9 \u00e0 la cr\u00eaperie et j\u2019ai choisi une cr\u00eape au jambon mais c\u2019\u00e9tait trop sal\u00e9, j\u2019ai d\u00e9cid\u00e9 d\u2019acheter un verre d\u2019eau<\/em> \u2026 oh yeah \u2026 au bord de la mer.\u2019<\/em> <\/p>\n\n\n\n I got an A. I can\u2019t speak French. I\u2019m not proud.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Such behaviour is called \u2018gaming the system\u2019 and it is the scourge of university lecturers everywhere. In Introductionary Programming it takes numerous forms ranging from the pragmatic to the malevolent. Some examples are selectively attempting assignments to achieve a minimum pass, reverse engineering projects around grading criteria, abstaining from programming roles in group work, exam cramming, manipulating teaching assistants to write their code, superficially adapting copied code, and sharing exercise solutions on Whats App groups.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The problem of course with these behaviours is that they result in poorer learning. Whilst we can adapt our assignments to close loopholes and can reprimand and inform those we catch in the act of gaming, a significant portion of students persist. Achieving a minimum pass at introductory programming with scant knowledge of how to program a computer, such students find themselves facing increasingly insurmountable challenges as their course attempts to scaffold on faulty foundational knowledge. <\/p>\n\n\n\n I\u2019m in no doubt that this scenario is a major contributor to Computer Science\u2019s status as the worst performing subject with regards to undergraduate non-continuation in the UK.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This isn\u2019t the fault of our students. It\u2019s not surprising that they game the system in this way. Our students are gamers. Outside of education, they have been brought up on a rich diet of commercial video games informed by forty years of industry experience in optimising for maximal engagement. <\/p>\n\n\n\n This cultural fact is immutable, but we needn\u2019t view it negatively. Jane McGonigal says that \u201c\u2026 when we\u2019re in game worlds, I believe that many of us become the best version of ourselves \u2014 the most likely to help at a moment\u2019s notice, the most likely to stick with a problem as long at it takes, to get up after failure and try again.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n