Introduction
Hello everyone! Welcome to the first official week of the Opportunity Forecasts. We are the “GamifiED” team, composed of Jodee Skiba, Brian Pearce, Jessy Sandhu, and Jake DePodesta. We are presenting an OER on the topic of Gamification and its related evolving market. The OER is hosted on a Google Site and consists of four modules, one from each of us. Each module views gamification through our own perspectives, ranging from K-12, administration, international, and EAL education.
Thesis Statement:
The “points and badges” era of EdTech is officially dead. Step into the shoes of an Educational Venture Analyst to discover why standalone apps are crashing, and where the smart money in gamification is actually moving over the next ten years.
Below, you’ll find a schedule for the week ahead where we will be your course conductors. At the bottom, you’ll find a few reminders and tips for navigating, contributing, and questioning. Thanks for joining us!
Schedule and Main Tasks:
Monday, June 15
- Read this entire launch post! Look at you go!
- Familiarize yourself with the OER website
- Read the home page, skim each module, and read our “About Us” page to colour your understanding of our OER with the authors in mind.
- Familiarize yourself with the OER website
Tuesday, June 16
- Module 1: Gamification in Grades K-3 – by Jodee Skiba
- Find out more about what gamification is from a K-3 perspective. Explore classroom examples, examine the market context, and consider both the opportunities and limitations of gamification in education.
- Main Task: Design your own gamified K-3 learning experience in the “Interactive Design Challenge”!
- Find out more about what gamification is from a K-3 perspective. Explore classroom examples, examine the market context, and consider both the opportunities and limitations of gamification in education.
Wednesday, June 17
- Module 2: Gamification in STEM Education – by Jake DePodesta
- With the learning from Module 1 in mind, now take on Module 2.
- Expect to learn about the “landscape” of STEM gamification markets, and role-play as a market strategist to “pivot” a gamification start-up
- Main Task(s): Contribute a “Pivot Strategy” slide to the Venture Pivot activity. Don’t forget to include your name!
Thursday, June 18
- Module 3: Gamification in Inner City Elementary Education – by Jessy Sandhu
- You’re promoted to a Board Director position, and will be providing feedback to an edtech start up company in the form of a Google Doc.
- Main Task(s): Complete two Google Forms; one pertaining to reflections on applications of gamification, and another where you’re staking your claim as a board of directors as to whether or not your start-up is ready to go to market for an investing round.
- You’re promoted to a Board Director position, and will be providing feedback to an edtech start up company in the form of a Google Doc.
Friday and Saturday, June 19-20
- Module 4: Gamification for Translanguaging – by Brian Pearce
- Explore translanguaging as it relates to gamification.
- Focus on the context of your classroom for using just-right strategies
- Delve into the gamification platform Gimkit
- Create a kit focused on your own class context (real or imagined).
- Main Task(s): Reflect upon best practice as it relates to language use and gamification by completing an entry to a Google Form. Note: The quality of submission will be a significant point of reference for the leaderboard standing at the end of this unit.
Sunday, June 21
- Wrap-up and Leaderboard Posting
- Finish any unfinished business on any of the modules, and take a look at the “leaderboard awards” we have posted, highlighting everyone’s contributions (read more below)
Tips and Reminders:
- As you just read above, we will be posting a final leaderboard at the end of the week, to highlight those who, “in [our] team’s estimation, contributed an exceptional level of thought leadership within those activities” (excerpted from the assignment overview).
Fittingly for us, this leaderboard fits perfectly with our theme of gamification! A little competition never hurts anyone, right? This means that after Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Saturday, we’ll be keeping track of those who have been completing their “Main Tasks”, and who have been contributing novel and relevant ideas. Note that in the schedule above, the Main Tasks that are tracked are noted under each day.
The three categories for which we will be awarding praise/bragging rights will be:
a) Most consistent contributor (measured by timeliness of task completion and number of tasks completed)
b) Most impactful thought leadership (voted on by authors at end-of-week)
c) Most valued feedback (voted on by authors at the end-of-week)
- If you have any questions or concerns about any of the content found on any module, please comment below and reference the module number and/or the author’s name. We’ll get back to you as soon as we can. If it’s particularly urgent, send us a message on Canvas.
- As we are the first group to go, we are of the mind that our OER will certainly need refining and iteration to make it great. We strongly welcome any constructive feedback/criticism to help us improve!
FIND OUR OPEN EDUCATIONAL RESOURCE AT THIS LINK
Hello folks! We’re already halfway through the week so here’s a quick check-in with some competition analytics;
-Of the 28 of us, 8 have completed both Main Tasks for Tuesday and Wednesday already.
-Of those 8, 4 have been on time both days.
-17 out of 28 have not yet completed any Main Tasks. It seems the participation spectrum is polarized!
-And while all the responses so far have been great, 1 person has already been making waves with their novel and thoughtful contributions. The leaderboard is already taking shape!
-As you can see, the top spot for “most valued feedback” is still wide open!
We look forward to seeing how the latter half of the week will shape up. Please don’t hesitate to comment, provide feedback, ask questions, or otherwise reach out.
Thanks!
The GamifiED team
Hello GamifiED Team!
First, congratulations on being the first group to go. That’s not an easy position to be in, and I appreciate how openly you’ve invited feedback.
One piece of feedback on the “STEM Gamification: Market Dynamics Interactive” is that I found it difficult to interpret what was happening after selecting the different environmental frictions. The description explains that users can “track how individual gamification sectors handle economic, regulatory, and institutional barriers,” so I expected to see sectors move around the matrix or receive some explanation of the impact.
Instead, I noticed that some sectors changed colour (to orange or red) and appeared to change size, but I wasn’t sure what those visual changes represented. Because I wasn’t certain what the colours and size changes meant, I found it difficult to draw conclusions from the interaction.
The concept is interesting and adds depth to the discussion but I think a simple legend or brief explanation of what the visual changes signify would make the activity much more intuitive and help users understand the intended takeaway.
Looking forward to seeing the final leaderboard!
I enjoyed working through this OER and appreciated the amount of effort, creativity, and collaboration that clearly went into its design. One of the strengths of the experience was how each module reflected the unique perspectives and professional contexts from each team member. As someone working in Educational Technology, I found it valuable to see how gamification is considered across different educational settings and learner needs. This helped demonstrate the broad applicability of gamification as well as aligning the Opportunity Forecast focus of the assignment.
The interactive elements of the OER kept me engaged throughout. I will admit that I had to work ahead because my schedule this week is quite busy, so I recognize that may have contributed somewhat to my experience. An observation I made at times was when the overall experience felt cognitively demanding due to the number of activities and Google Forms across the modules. While each activity had merit, I occasionally found myself focusing more on task completion than reflecting on the broader concepts being explored. I think building greater cohesion between modules or streamlining some of the activities could help reduce this demand on participants.
The Module 4 translanguaging activity stood out as the most meaningful learning experience for me this week. While it was the more time-intensive activities, every component felt purposeful and built towards application. The activity moved beyond experiencing Gimkit and asked users to apply, analyze, and evaluate how gamification strategies could support language learning. This really represented a strong connection between engagement and meaningful learning.
From an EVA perspective, I also found myself wanting more emphasis on the market and opportunity forecasting dimensions of gamification. The OER did an excellent job allowing participants to experience gamification firsthand, but I wanted more time to explore questions such as long-term impact, sustainability, implementation barriers, evidence of effectiveness, and how vendors demonstrate educational value beyond engagement metrics. These are questions I often ask when evaluating educational technology products, and I think they represent important considerations for the future of the market as well.
Overall, this OER is thoughtful, engaging, and well-designed. It successfully demonstrates the potential of gamification within education.
Bravo everyone! 🙂
Great job guys, it’s no easy feat to present first! Your OER was very well designed, it was easy to navigate, and comprehensive with the information presented. My star is that you kept us engaged with all of the aforementioned things. My wish is that it was not so content heavy, I felt at times there were too many things to interact with (google forms/activities) and so I felt overwhelmed. In this case maybe quality is better than quantity- however this is a big assignment worth a lot of marks- so I understand the thinking behind putting in a lot of content and activities in your OER. I liked the Venture Pivot task most, even though I had no prior background in these technologies, you explained them well, and so I could critically think about the task at hand and complete it. Congratulations on finishing first!
Hello all!
Thanks for your patience as we’ve put this together, but we do owe you all a leaderboard statement!
So here are your top contributors for our first OER of the week;
Most Consistent award: Jason LeHequet
Best Feedback award: Sam Quarterman
Thought Leadership award: We had a hard time deciding, so we made it a two-way tie between Sut Teng Chong (Ice), and Denise Mouton who both had novel and insightful contributions to share in our activities.
Thanks to ALL of you who participated and offered feedback. We’ve heard your common theme of “less is more” when it came to cognitive load. We look forward to seeing how everyone else does!
Thanks,
GamifiED team
Hi GamifiED team,
Thank you for the clear and engaging OER. I liked how you looked at gamification from several perspectives, including K-3, STEM, inner-city education, and translanguaging. This made the topic feel more realistic because gamification is not one single strategy or market.
Your thesis statement also stood out to me. The idea that the “points and badges” era is dead pushed the conversation beyond simple rewards and competition. It raised a stronger EVA question: where is gamification actually heading, and what kinds of tools or systems have long-term value in education?
I was especially interested in how the leaderboard worked. It fit your theme well, but it also raised useful questions about motivation, participation, and what kinds of contributions get recognized. I liked that your categories included consistency, thought leadership, and feedback because those went beyond simply rewarding the fastest participant.
Overall, I enjoyed exploring the modules and seeing how your OER connected gamification to deeper learning, market change, and classroom context.