Episode 121 Michele Haiken on Gamify Literacy
Michele Haiken on Gamify Literacy
Episode Summary:
In this episode of "Experience Points" by University XP, host Dave Eng interviews Dr. Michele Haiken, an experienced literacy educator, and middle school English teacher, discusses her journey into gamification for teaching literacy. She shares how an educational conference sparked her interest and how students, especially gamers, played a crucial role in implementing it in her classroom, emphasizing student buy-in, motivation, and creativity. The conversation explores aspects like student agency, competition, and cooperation within gamification, along with insights from Michele's book, "Gamify Literacy." A case study from her dystopian unit is provided, highlighting literacy skill development and empowerment. The discussion also addresses the balance between traditional and innovative teaching methods in both middle school and higher education. Michele teaches various classes, including English methods, literacy development, and middle school literacy, and her blog, "The Teaching Factor," shares insights and resources.
Michele Haiken
she/her/hers
Educator and Author
The Teaching Factor
Michele Haiken, Ed.D. has been teaching literacy for more than two decades. She is a lifelong learner, educator, author, and speaker. Michele is a middle school English teacher and an adjunct professor of literacy at Manhattanville College in Westchester, NY. Michele is the editor of the book Gamify Literacy (ISTE, 2016), author of New Realms for Writing (ISTE, 2020), a quick guide to podcasting with students and co-author of Creative SEL (ISTE, 2023). For the past twelve years Michele has authored the blog The Teaching Factor, where she shares ideas for digital technology and literacy in the classroom to bolster student success.
(Twitter): https://twitter.com/teachingfactor
(Facebook): https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100004341497594
(Instagram): https://www.instagram.com/teaching_factor
(Website): http://theteachingfactor.com
Dave Eng:
Hi, and welcome to Experience Points by University XP. On Experience Points, we explore different ways we can learn from games. I'm your host Dave Eng, from games-based learning by University XP. Find out more by going to www.universityxp.com.
On today's episode, we'll learn from Michele Haiken. Dr. Michele Haiken is an experienced literacy educator, middle school English teacher, and adjunct professor at Manhattanville College. As an author, editor, and speaker, Michele has contributed to influential works like Gamify Literacy, and New Realms for Writing for the International Society for Technology and Education. Michele's blog, The Teaching Factor, reflects her dedication to enhancing student success through innovative approaches to digital technology and literacy in the classroom. Michele, welcome to the show.
Michele Haiken:
Thank you so much, Dave. Thank you for having me. I'm excited to be here today.
Dave Eng:
Great. I'm glad to have you here as well. I want to start off with talking about gamification in literacy, because I think that is all the specific topic that we're interested in. And specifically I'd like to know, can you share your motivation behind exploring gamification as a teaching strategy for literacy specifically, and how it has evolved in your teaching over the years?
Michele Haiken:
Well, when I first heard about gamification, I was at an educational conference in Connecticut. And I wasn't looking for it. I wasn't at a point in my teaching career where I was like, "I need something new." I stumbled into a conversation and a discussion that just completely transformed my whole thinking about teaching in the classroom, especially with my middle school students. And I just was enamored and engaged and I thought to myself, how do I bring this into my classroom? How could I really inspire my students? And I brought it back into my classroom. I actually talked to a few of my students who I knew were big gamers to say, hey, I looked at this platform. That platform, it was Classcraft. And I said, "I'd love to try this out."
And it was sort of the spring, and so we'd been together with the students for a while. And they were like, "Yeah, sure. Give us a day or two and we'll come back." And these two students basically sat after school with me for more than a week, and they were like, "This is so cool. This is how to set it up," and really taught me when I gave them that invitation.
And after that, once I saw the buy-in from so many students and even students that weren't typically really strong English students in my classroom, but were just great gamers, when they saw the ideas mashed together. It drove my interest even more, and I started finding learning networks more about gamification, reading as much as I could on gamification, and really trying to figure out and adapt what I was seeing to utilize in my classroom.
And I noticed over time that the buy-in from the students, the motivation, the creativity, the going above and beyond. A lot of my students were doing from just the, "Here's what you need to succeed in classroom," but if I brought in an extra game or a side quest, they were all into it. And it became a giant learning curve and roller coaster throughout that. I still love what I see as the outcome of bringing gamification in my English classroom.
Dave Eng:
And you brought up a lot of really great points there, but do you happen to remember, was there any particular aspect to using gamification in the classroom that your students were attracted to?
Michele Haiken:
So I think there were a few elements that they were really attracted to. One, I'd say the team aspect of it, putting them in teams, giving them ownership of their teams, what their team was called, doing weekly challenges as a team. But then also realizing that there was an individual aspect of it to earn as many points as they wanted and go above and beyond their team, and work collaboratively with their team. That was a huge light bulb moment of like, wow, this is really cool.
And I'm more of the sandbox type of person. Not to say that I take things and I make it completely from scratch, and sometimes I do, but I'm definitely inspired by so much in our everyday world, whether it is like a game show on television like Chopped or That's My Jam, or thinking about a board game and how I can integrate that into a unit. And then just the whole story element and creativity and creating the missions really was exciting and enticing. And watching my different gamers in the classroom and my different players, because I would hone into those player types, Bartle's player types, with each unit was designed to level up and raise a particular type of player.
Dave Eng:
I see. Well, great. Definitely a lot of things that you talked about there that we've covered with other guests before, specifically like your student's agency, their autonomy to make decisions within the game and the class. Competition is often a really important and critical element to using games in the classroom, but so is cooperation, like you said, breaking them up into individual teams. So thanks for sharing, Michele. I'm glad that you're able to find a really applicable use of gamification in your classroom.
Michele Haiken:
But that's the wonderful thing about gamification, Dave. And it is that you're I'll say the game creator as the educator, the teacher, you're the one who is designing, but also looking at who your players are and how they're playing. And two years into where I started, I sort of had a gaming committee that would meet with me once a quarter, and they would tell me what they liked and then come up with new ideas, or by different conversations, we're constantly adding. So it's not like it's a fixed element in your classroom. It's something that you're always revising, reflecting, even today and post-COVID, that the game changes with what's going on. And if you're sort of the teacher that's okay with fluidity and fluctuation and revision, then gamification is a great match for you.
Dave Eng:
Right, and I think that is a really good segue into our second question. Because obviously Michele, you are no newcomer to using gamification and games in the classroom, so I want to talk about Gamify Literacy, which is your book, and it emphasizes the use of gaming techniques to enhance literacy and content learning. So can you provide an example or case study where gamification had a particularly notable impact on student engagement and achievement, if you have a specific excerpt or example from the book that you could talk about?
Michele Haiken:
Well, I feel like so much has changed since the publication of that book. So I mean, there is great tools in there, but what I do in my classroom now goes even beyond a lot of that. And it's funny, I always say to my editor, it's time for a second edition and new added pieces, because creating those missions... And there's a whole piece where I do have an excerpt from a librarian who created an entire informational studies unit using missions. That was a great idea for me then to start looking at the units of study that I do with my eighth graders, and how I can turn those into different missions where it's a choose your own adventure type quest throughout that unit that we're studying. Informational text, maybe it's dystopia.
And really what I started to do after that book was published was take different elements and apply those to the different units. So in my dystopian unit where my students are reading contemporary dystopian novels, as they're reading it, they're completing different missions and collecting different badges. And there are certain badges that are required, and then there's other badges that they can go after, and to help them show their understanding and connections that they're making with their reading. Other missions are more point-based, so that it really helps how they're, again it's like a choose your own adventure where there are some required stops along the way, and others where it's more like, hey, you can go this route or you can go this route, and it's going to bring you back to the same skill.
So these really helped, and the choices, and the menus, and the missions, and the maps, and the badges really was a great technique that enhanced my students' ability, not only to build and hone in on those literacy skills, but as you said earlier before, it gave them choice, it gave them voice, it gave them agency, where they were in control of majority of those choices and their learning and got excited about that.
Dave Eng:
I see. And also, you brought up this before talking about Bartle's player taxonomy, those different quests and those different badges also served different types of players such as explorers and achievers. When you were implementing this in the classroom, did you see a lot of those different player archetypes in your students when you were teaching and playing with them?
Michele Haiken:
Oh, absolutely. Because if we were doing investigative journalism and nonfiction, and I, alongside of that, did a current events little mini-game on the side, I could see a certain... I won't say, sometimes it was my warriors who attack that, who were all for that because there was entire... There was a leaderboard going on, they had to answer a question about something that was happening in the world within a certain amount of time, and they couldn't wait for the question to be released, and then they were secretly submitting their answers. It was great.
Dave Eng:
Nice, nice. Well, thanks for sharing. I want to spend some time on our third question here today, and it's our last question, specifically talking about tradition and innovation. So as both a middle school English teacher and an adjunct professor of literacy, how do you strike a balance between traditional teaching methods and innovative approaches like gamification and digital tools? What advice do you have for educators navigating this balance? And if you could talk about it from a higher education perspective as well, I would appreciate it since you did spend some time talking about it in your work in a middle school classroom.
Michele Haiken:
Sure. In terms of looking even at my graduate students and thinking about teaching literacy in the content areas, when we talk about traditional teaching, are we talking about the sage on the stage? The big teacher at the front of the classroom? Because that's really evolved tremendously, and we as educators need to evolve with that.
In my own graduate classes, I do very little lecturing. It's all hands-on. There are a lot of playlists. There are multi, when I'm teaching my literacy in the content area classroom, and I have an entire class where we are talking about gamification. They are in teams, they are doing multilevel games, they're working for two and a half hours straight to sort understand what gamification is. It's not me getting up in front of them and lecturing and saying, "This is what I do in my classroom."
Really, my approach to teaching is very much hands-on, and we learn by doing. So there's a lot of choice boards, like I said, and Hyper Docs and playlists, that are going to help to... I'd say not help, but balance. I don't know if it's necessarily a strong balance, because I'm more teetering towards those innovative approaches because so many of my graduate students coming in are so stuck on that traditional teaching, and even teaching texts. And I'm sort of like, but we're in a place where we're teaching readers, we're not teaching the book. Unless you're in an AP class, and I want my students to see how with engagement, and innovation, and active learner-centered opportunities in your classroom, you can still get deeper learning and understanding from your students.
Dave Eng:
I see. And can you also share what classes you teach in higher education?
Michele Haiken:
So I just did a winter session on literacy in the content areas. Starting tomorrow, I am teaching an English methods class, and also a literacy development class for grades seven through 12. So I teach three. I also in the fall teach a middle school literacy class, which is all blended learning practices.
Dave Eng:
I see. Wow. That's quite a teaching load in addition to being a middle school teacher.
Michele Haiken:
Yes. Well, it's like one a semester.
Dave Eng:
I see. I see. Okay. Well, Michele, I really enjoyed our conversation today, so thanks for joining us. If people wanted to go and find out more about you and pick up copies of your books, where can they go?
Michele Haiken:
Well, you could always visit my blog, theteachingfactor.com, where I'm posting up things that I do in my middle school classroom. Sometimes I post up things that I do with my graduate students, and sharing materials and quests and missions and games that I'm making or playing around with. I'm on Instagram where I'll share reels and images of the material as well. And the books you can pick up with ISTE at ISTE.org or on Amazon.
Dave Eng:
Excellent. I will include links to all of those references and books in the show notes. So Michele, again, thanks for spending time with us today. Greatly appreciate it.
Michele Haiken:
Dave, thank you so much. Thank you for all that you do to help share your love and knowledge and experience with gamification to get more people on board.
Dave Eng:
You got it. Thanks, Michele. I hope you found this episode useful. If you'd like to learn more, then a great place to start is with my free course on gamification. You can sign up for it at https://www.universityxp.com/gamification. You can also get a full transcript of this episode, including links to references in the description or show notes.
Thanks for joining us. Again, I'm your host, Dave Eng from games-based learning by University XP. On Experience Points, we explore different ways we can learn from games. So if you liked this episode, please consider commenting, sharing and subscribing. Subscribing is absolutely free and ensures that you'll get the next episode of Experience Points delivered directly to you. I'd also love it if you took some time to rate the show. We live to lift others learning, so if you found this episode useful, consider sharing it with someone who could also benefit. Also make sure to visit University XP online at universityxp.com. University XP is also on Twitter, otherwise known as X @University_XP, and on Facebook and LinkedIn as University XP. Also, feel free to email me anytime. My email address is dave@universityxp.com. Game on!
Cite this Episode
Eng, D. (Host). (2024, September 29). Michele Haiken on Gamify Literacy. (No. 119) Video]. Experience Points. University XP. https://www.universityxp.com/video/121
Internal Ref: UXPZZDM046ZV
References
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Eng, D. (2019, October 29). Gaming with Motivation. Retrieved February 27, 2024, from https://www.universityxp.com/blog/2019/10/29/gaming-with-motivation
Eng, D. (2020, April 30). What is Gamification? Retrieved February 27, 2024, from https://www.universityxp.com/blog/2020/4/30/what-is-gamification
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Garcia-Marquez, C., & Bauer, K. N. (2020). An Examination and Extension of the Theory of Gamified Learning: The Moderating Role of Goal Orientation. Simulation & Gaming, 1046878120958741. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1046878120958741
Haiken, M. (2017). Gamify Literacy: Boost Comprehension, Collaboration and Learning. International Society for Technology in Education. https://www.amazon.com/Gamify-Literacy-Comprehension-Collaboration-Learning/dp/1564843866
Haiken, M. (2019). New Realms for Writing: Inspire Student Expression with Digital Age Formats. International Society for Technology in Education. https://www.amazon.com/New-Realms-Writing-Inspire-Expression/dp/156484790X
Haiken, M., & Gura, M. (2023). Creative SEL: Using Hands-On Projects to Boost Social-Emotional Learning. International Society for Technology in Education. https://www.amazon.com/Creative-SEL-Hands-Projects-Social-Emotional/dp/156484949X/