Can Gamification Turn the Tide Against Declining Enrollment?
Can Gamification Turn the Tide Against Declining Enrollment?
Can Gamification Turn the Tide Against Declining Enrollment?
By Brandon Paykamian
May 5, 2023
Summary
With U.S. colleges and universities battling enrollment declines, many student affairs officials are turning to gamification platforms to meet students where they are and keep up with the evolving expectations of new generations regarding classroom engagement, credential opportunities and other aspects of campus life.
According to Amrit Ahluwalia, director of strategic insights at Modern Campus, a major focus of Modern Campus' student affairs solutions is helping colleges and universities attract and retain more students amid the enrollment crisis.
"The concept of gamification is valuable at a much wider level, because what gamification does is create a more innate connectivity between the learner and their engagement, so what we're facilitating in terms of gamification is allowing institutions to find creative ways to engage students to keep them retained."
Meghan Hakey, senior director of sales for Modern Campus' student engagement tools Presence and Signal Vine and former student affairs adviser for Castleton University, said universities have used gamification in order to create "Incentive-based activities," where every event includes opportunities for students to gain "Points" in categories such as leadership and career skills, among other metrics.
"The whole concept was that we were student affairs professionals building this for student affairs professionals, and one of the hardest issues we had is student affairs has always been looked at as the pizza party planners but our students have changed so much, and the kinds of events and opportunities they want to participate in are the ones directly connected to their career goals," she said, noting that the trend of gamification of learning has started to converge with micro-credentialing in higher ed.
While higher ed institutions have used gamification to increase student engagement more generally across campus, gamification has also been used in K-12 schools to increase classroom engagement via programs such as Discovery Education's digital learning platform, which features games and activities designed to boost student participation in STEM and language arts courses, among other subjects.
"The gamification of learning can help educators close the 'engagement gap' and provide the avenue educators need to reach students with instruction. Discovery Education, as well as ed-tech companies across the sector, have embraced gamification as a way to help educators spark student curiosity and drive instruction," he wrote in an email to Government Technology.
Reference
Paykamian, B. (2023, May 5). Can gamification turn the tide against declining enrollment?. GovTech. https://www.govtech.com/education/higher-ed/can-gamification-turn-the-tide-against-declining-enrollment