1. And the team at the Gameful Learning Lab
Going Gameful with
And the team at the Gameful Learning Lab

2. What we’re going to do today
Introduce the team
Introduce GradeCraft as a student
Planning for gameful
Interaction and discussion

3. Shameless plugs Summer Institute – July 24 & 25 in Ann Arbor
Follow us on

4. Who is here today? Barry Fishman Rachel Niemer Camille Ulrich
Evan Straub
Please feel free to grab any of them and have a side conversation at any point

5. Pick Barry’s Brain

6. My Introduction (to gameful)
Let me tell you abit about myself. To be honest, I am the newest member of the GradeCraft team, but I consider myself as someone who tries to teach gamefully for many, many years now. So my background is in neuroscience, instructional technology and my doctorate is in ed psych. My doctoral research focused on why learning technology ticks us off so much.
Picture it – undergraduate educational psychology – a required course for all pre-service teachers, but one that has students with a lot of different backgrounds, skills and knowledge levels.
I’m sure no one here has dealt with class like that before either.
And I was really struggling with this class. It was hard to make everyone happy.
So one time I taught it, I turned the assessment of the class over to the students. Now, I didn’t have the capacity for individualized paths at the time – I didn’t have the time to set up the spreadsheets like Barry did – and certainly not the capacity like GradeCraft. But I had the students work together to come up with the plan. I would coach them here or there, and the activity doubled as a demonstration of some of the concepts we would talk about later on in the semester.
Overall what I found is that most of those times, the students would come up with a syllabus that was remarkably similar to what I had initially planned.
But the complaints? Gone. Students felt like they had some ownership and autonomy in how that class was being assessed. And because they made the “decisions” – it was all transparent to them as well.
And that is powerful stuff.
And I’m going to guess that many of you here already have what we would consider gameful aspects of your own classes. Maybe you encourage resubmitting assignments. Maybe you give students some choice about the topics they write on, or you let them drop a quiz. Those are all what we would consider gameful. Those will probably feel familiar to you. And since you are here, it probably feels right.
So, here is my big pitch, my big soapbox moment.
I’ve been working in ed tech for over 15 years. I’m sure I’m not the only one here. And despite all the advances, all the new gadgets – technology is still most frequently used as supplement to instruction. I think this is because the real technological advances in education happened so long ago. Think about when the last time a technology changed the way we were able to teach. The first teachers passed knowledge to their students through stories. When paper became accessible to all students – the way we taught fundamentally changed. No long were students required to be dependent on their memory. They could write things down.
And I truly believe that GradeCraft fundamentally changes the capacity for how we can teach. Offering choice and keeping your sanity as a teacher is hard. Without a stack of teaching assistants or a tool like GradeCraft – well, I just don’t know how you could manage it.
Off my soapbox.

7. Since you’re here….

8. What are gameful principles?
Clear Learning Goals
Identity Play
Embedded Assessment
Productive Failure
Allow for Practice & Reinforcement
Encourage Exploration
Intrinsic & Extrinsic Motivation
Support Autonomy
Encourage Belonging
Support Competence
Autonomy
Belonging
Competency

9. How are you already teaching gamefully?
Offer choice?
Transparency?
Building up?
Freedom to fail?
Prompt feedback?
Experiential?
Role playing?
Resubmitals?
How are you already teaching gamefully?

10. Highlighting Support for Autonomy/Choice

11. Implementing Choice

12. Linear Course Design Grade A=290/300 pts Total Points for A: 290
Assignment 1
50 pts
Assignment 2
50 pts
Quiz
25 pts
Assignment 3
50 pts
Test
125 pts
Total Points for A: 290
Total Points Available: 300

13. Ala Carte Model – Number & Points
Group pts
Possible 50 pts
pts each
Complete up to 2
Possible 100 pts
Weekly pts each
Complete as many as desired
Capped 60 points
Final pts
REQUIRED
Complete One
Grade
A=290/420 pts
pts each
Complete up to 5
Possible 50 pts
Case Study pts each
Complete up to 5
Possible 100 pts
Total Points for A: 290
Total Points Available: 420

14. Choice in Challenge Total Points for A: 290
Level 1
20 pts
Level 2
35 pts
Level 3
50 pts
Total Points for A: 290
Total Points Available: 450
Assignment 1
Level 1
20 pts
Level 2
35 pts
Level 3
50 pts
Assignment 2
Unlock Project
Level 1
20 pts
Level 2
35 pts
Level 3
50 pts
Assignment 3
Level 4
75 pts
Choice in Challenge
Level 1
20 pts
Level 2
35 pts
Level 3
50 pts
Assignment 4
Level 1
20 pts
Level 2
35 pts
Level 3
50 pts
Assignment 5
Unlock Project
Level 1
20 pts
Level 2
35 pts
Level 3
50 pts
Level 4
75 pts
Assignment 6

15. Choice in Mastery Resubmit Resubmit Resubmit Resubmit Resubmit
Assignment 1
50 pts
Assignment 2
50 pts
Quiz
25 pts
Assignment 3
50 pts
Test
125 pts
Resubmit
Resubmit
Resubmit
Resubmit
Resubmit
Total Points for A: 290
Total Points Available: 300
Choice in Mastery

16. Managing this is hard. Thus, GradeCraft
Balancing Autonomy with Competency

17. What is GradeCraft? Course Management System
Help you build assessment structure
Grade Predictor to help students self-regulate choice
What is it not?
Not a full learning management system

18. GradeCraft as a student
Student account username/passwords are on each table
You will log in to a demo course.

19. Things to look for as a student:
Dashboard with upcoming assignments/events
Grade Predictor
Grading Scheme
Assignments nested in categories
Badges
Group assignments
Grading Rubrics
Things to look for as a student:

20. I’m sold. What’s next?

21. Transforming to Gameful
Know yourself, your class, your limitations
Even if it means - start small or incremental
Take your time with planning
Lots of different ways to implement gameful strategies
Think about how you will manage it
My bias – while I care about student learning – and I really, really do. I’m also a teacher myself. And I have real empathy for teachers.

22. Planning for a Gameful Class
Transparency can’t happen on the fly
Gameful elements can be integrated
It doesn’t have to use technology – but it helps

23. Simple Planning Tool

24. Planning Gamefully How are you going to offer choice?
Categories of assignments
Don’t worry about grading scheme immediately
Don’t just think about student effort – think about your effort as well
Utilize technology where it makes sense to automate tasks
GradeCraft, spreadsheets, autotext, rubrics
Take your time with planning!

25. GradeCraft as an Instructor
(may need to log out)

26. Contact Us – help@gradecraft.com
Camille Ulrich
@culrich
Evan Straub
@estraub
Barry Fishman
@BarryFishman
Rachel Niemer
@rkniemer