Fun in the Classroom

Introduction

Homework and rigor chafe me like a pair of 40-grit sandpaper underwear. While homework has been around since I was in school it is now a conscript in the war on children. In response to a perceived everyone-gets-a-trophy culture the educational world has responded with rigor and grit. Terms that are better suited to describing corpses and crime dramas than education.

A few years ago I started referring to homework as homefun, but my resolve soon wilted in the face of the pervasive work worship of the American educational system. When our district was trying to adopt a learning management system, the administration kept touting the gamification aspects. I was intrigued. How could we make school more like a game? Unfortunately the instruction consisted mostly of the tech guy standing at the front of the room with a SmartBoard saying, “badges and leaderboards” on an infinite loop. The idea has also been the topic of breakout sessions at the Midwest Educational Technology Conference, but every time it was presented I kept hearing the same thing, and that was not how I viewed gaming or fun. My idea of fun involved solving puzzles, discovering treasure, and hiking to a mountain overlook. I decided to research gaming and see if there was a way to integrate their design framework into project based learning.

During my research I came across references to the fourteen types of fun and realized that on every curriculum document and lesson plan that I have ever read there was not a box for fun. There was a box for the alphanumeric stew of standards. There was a box for homework. And that is about as far as I got because I usually started to doze off. Inside every board game box, often printed on the underside of the lid is a set of instructions. Every game from Axis & Allies to Candyland have similar sections called the object, contents, setup, and gameplay all of which have obvious parallels to unit plans, so why are games fun and schools rigorous and gritty?

Methodology

One possible answer is that educators, students and the school system value different types of fun. In order to collect some data on this question I developed a ridiculously unscientific and informal survey in which I asked teachers and students to pick their top types of fun. Basically if science was health food, it would be a kale and quinoa salad and this survey would be a bowl of ice cream topped with Cap’n Crunch. I thought of the idea on the drive to work and without much forethought immediately sat down at my computer to create a Google Form full of typos to send out. It was sent to educators through all school email, Twitter, and Facebook. The student survey was given to my students in class who were offered extra credit to complete it (more on this later) and passed along by other educators. I did not collect email addresses or demographic data because I did not want to broach privacy concerns or make it difficult for people to answer. Again, this was not science and did not meet any standards of ethics for using human test subjects. I am working under the assumption that participants willingly took the right survey and only responded once. In total eighty-nine educators and ninety-four students responded.

Below is a list of the fourteen types of fun as described in the survey.

Fourteen Types of Fun

• Beauty - That which pleases the senses. You enjoy art galleries, scenic overlooks, concerts, and dining out.
• Immersion - You enjoy role playing or escapist literature. You like getting lost in another world.
• Intellectual Problem Solving - You enjoy finding solutions to challenging problems and situations that require thought.
• Competition - You enjoy proving your superiority in. It is good to be first.
• Social Interaction - You like doing things with other human beings. You like social media and hanging with friends.
• Comedy - You like to laugh. You enjoy stand-up comedy and funny movies.
• Thrill of Danger - Activities are inherently more fun if the stakes are high. You are an adrenaline junkie.
• Physical Activity - This is kind of self-explanatory. You like to play sports.
• Love - Deep meaningful relationships and affection towards others. Romantic.
• Creation - You like to make things, build things, write things, and paint things that have not existed before.
• Power - You enjoy have a strong effect on others. You are an influencer.
• Discovery - You enjoy finding out what wasn't know before. It can be exploring the physical world or uncovering secrets.
• Advancement and Completion - You like achieving levels and finishing tasks. You were an excellent scout earning many badges and ranks. Eventually you earned the top rank.
• Application of a Skill - Using one’s physical abilities in a difficult situation. You take pride in your skills such as hand eye coordination or reflexes.

https://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/227531/fourteen_forms_of_fun.php

Predictions

My assumption going into this was that there would be a disparity in the types of fun that students and teachers reported liking. My students were quite adamant that I had no idea what fun was, and I assumed that this relationship was similar to what other teachers experienced. It also seemed intuitively obvious that the school system valued competition, advancement, and completion by awarding class rank, letters for athletics and extracurriculars, grades, and diplomas. It is my belief that emphasizing these types of fun over the twelve other types can have a negative impact on students’ and teachers’ enjoyment of education.



Table 1: My predictions of responses Predictions

Teachers	Students
Intellectual Problem Solving	Social Interaction
Creation	Competition
Discovery	Comedy
Advancement & Completion	Thrill of Danger
Beauty	Advancement and Completion

. Obviously, this reflects my bias about teachers and students. I invite you to make your own predictions prior to reading the results.

Results (Too late. If you didn’t make your own predictions it is too late now.)

Table 2

Educator (89)		Students (94)
Beauty	65.2	Comedy	71.9
Social Interaction	61.8	Creation	48.3
Comedy	57.3	Social Interaction	44.9
Love	42.7	Phys. Activity	43.8
Creation	40.4	Competition	40.4
Int. Problem Solving	37.1	Beauty	39
Discovery	36	Power	38.2
Immersion	34.8	Application of Skill	36
Phys. Activity	32.6	Discovery	36
Application of Skill	19.1	Love	32.6
Adv. Completion	18	Int. Problem Solving	31.5
Competition	14.6	Immersion	29.2
Thrill of Danger	12.4	Thrill of Danger	27
Power	8	Adv. Completion	21.3

Table 3: Similarity Score (smaller number = more similar. Positive numbers indicate a teacher preference; negative numbers indicate a student preference.)

Table 2

Type of Fun	Difference in percent
Power	-30.2
Beauty	26.2
Competition	-25.8
Application of Skill	16.9
Social Interaction	16.9
Comedy	-14.6
Thrill of Danger	-14.6
Phys. Activity	-11.2
Love	10.1
Creation	-7.9
Int. Problem Solving	5.6
Immersion	5.6
Adv. and Completion	-2.2
Discovery	---

Observations (or the point in the report when you say to yourself, “Does this guy have a life?”)

At first I was only looking for similarities in ranking and was surprised to find out that teachers and students share three of the top five; Social Interaction, Comedy, and Creation. They also share two of the bottom five; Advancement and Completion and Thrill of Danger.

I was going to compare relative rank to see which types of the fun show the most disparity between teachers and students, but then I noticed that the students were a more heterogeneous group. This makes sense because all students are required to go to school, but teachers are a self-selected group that would likely have similar characteristics, or as popular opinion would have it a group of those that “can’t.” With the exception of Comedy which is a clear favorite with 71.9% of the students choosing it, all of the types of fun fell between 21% and 48 % selection showing a fairly even distribution amongst students. Teachers show a steep decline after Physical Activity which was chosen by 32% of the teachers. Next on the list was Application of Skill at 19%.

Comparing percentages between students and teachers, Discovery shows the most similarity with both groups coming in at 36%. The biggest disparity is in the realm of Competition with 40% percent student approval and only 15% of the teachers expressing an affinity for competing.

What I find most interesting is that Advancement and Completion were ranked near the bottom for both groups with only about one out of every five participants selecting it as part of their top five. Yet the school system is entirely constructed on advancement and completion. Students literally collect credits like on an old school upright Pac Man machine at Aladdin's Castle in the mall in order to complete a level and power up. After completing the twelfth level, education designers create a secret leaderboard and anoint the top point earner the valedictorian. We might as well give the kids a trackball and have them enter their monogram for posterity. Any student earning a perfect score is enshrined as an educational deity to whom all other students are compared. There is an obvious disconnect between education design and human concepts of fun.

Conclusions (The part most of you skipped to after looking at the tables)

Schools and education have not been designed by students and teachers. Somehow the one-fifth of the population that ranks Advancement and Completion as one of their favorites has taken over the system. Perhaps one reason is because this is one of the easiest types to quantify. Subjective data driven design for Love, Discovery, or Comedy is virtually impossible unless you install arcade style love testers and laugh-o-meters in the classroom. We often describe students who enjoy the hard to measure qualities as being intrinsically motivated and we consider this somehow better than the other types.

There is room for all types of fun in the classroom. It seems as if almost everyone values so called intrinsic motivation while at the same time demanding numbers to justify pedagogical choices. We should compromise and make room in our planning to consider how fun factors into our design. Obviously, given the heterogeneity of the student population we cannot please all of the students all of the time. One hundred percent engagement is a mythological beast worshipped by a small cult of wide-eyed sycophants intent on punishing non-believers, but we should analyze our own view of fun and recognize that it does not always match our audience’s expectations.

For example, it seems that most teachers, including myself, are not fans of competition. This may be because we are a bunch of nerds that were emotionally scarred by a particularly bruising bout of dodgeball, but the fact remains that students value it significantly more. We should examine our preconceived notions of the harm it might do the losers. Recently, while having a discussion with students about how to improve my lessons, a student suggested using Kahoot. I was familiar with the word from different conferences but mostly as something that I dismissed as too juvenile to use with my students. Many of the students agreed that Kahoot would be a great idea. I even asked my son, a sophomore at another school, and he said that his Spanish teachers use it. I went to the website and analyzed it in terms of the types of fun.

It is a quiz site with no more capabilities than Google Forms or Quizlet, but it does appeal to at least four types of fun. First of all it has colors and music which appeals to the students desire for beauty (This of course is in the eye of the beholder). It also incorporates a thrill of danger by having a time limit for answers, and the competitive aspect of a leader board allows students to rank themselves with their peers. Finally, it includes the application of skill and the minimal physical activity of tapping a button on their device as quickly as possible. The challenge for teachers is how to use Kahoot in way that actually promotes higher order thinking and not just recall.

I attempted to create a “serious” game for my mythology unit. One of the highlights of this school year was when I beta tested this text-based game I made about Joseph Campbell’s heroic cycle (Here is a link). Students that had not engaged in the texts, Gilgamesh and Star Wars, excitedly leapt from their chairs to make decisions about which characters to “speak to” and what objects to “pick up” for their inventory. I had assumed that the students would not be interested and offered it as an one day extra credit opportunity, I was surprised when they came back two days later asking if we were going to keep playing.

Fun is not a cure all. Those students asking to keep playing the game did not go home that night and login. They didn’t all of a sudden develop the chimeric love of learning we so desperately desire. Obviously teachers can’t be expected to be game designers or required to use websites like Kahoot. We can start to question the role that fun plays in our lessons and incorporate elements of the game design framework into our own plans. How can we structure our lessons so that students can gracefully fail? Can we effectively balance difficulty and win conditions? Can we incorporate other types of fun that cushion the blow of failure and encourage repetitive play? I don’t know all of the answers, but I am going to have fun trying.

Works Cite (Where I don’t use MLA or APA because it is fascist pitfall meant to check a box on a scoring guide.)

Heeter, Carrie & Chunhui, Kaitlan & , Chu & Maniar, Apar & Winn, Brian & Mishra, Punya & Egidio, Rhonda & Portwood-Stacer, Laura. (2004). Comparing 14 Plus 2 Forms of Fun in Commercial Versus Educational Space Exploration Digital Games. (Download the PDF here)

Matching Computer Game Genres to Educational Outcomes

MDA: A Formal Approach to Game Design and Game Research Robin Hunicke, Marc LeBlanc, Robert Zubek

The Design, Play, and Experience Framework Brian M. Winn

Mitgutsch, Konstantin & Alvarado, Narda. (2012). Purposeful by design?: A serious game design assessment framework. Foundations of Digital Games 2012, FDG 2012 - Conference Program. 12. 10.1145/2282338.2282364. (Download the PDF here)

Foundations of Game-Based Learning Jan L. Plass CREATE Lab New York University Bruce D. Homer Program in Educational Psychology The Graduate Center, City University of New York Charles K. Kinzer Department of Computing, Communication and Technology in Education Teachers College, Columbia University

Fourteen Types of Fun by Pierre-Alexandre Garneau [Design]

Rules for Axis and Allies

Rules for Candy Land