Playing with culture? A model for engaging through gamification

Leprosy: mobility exercise. Wellcome Collection. CC BY

In recent years, ‘gamification’, ‘game-based learning’, or ‘serious games’ have become terms very extended in the education domain. Now, during the COVID-19 pandemic, the heritage education sector also has applied these concepts as a way of connecting with a diverse audience through digital, although it was used before by museum educators in face-to-face activities. But, what do these terms mean? Is gaming only for children?

Understanding ‘gamification’, ‘game-based learning’ and ‘serious games’

Gamification is defined as the use of game elements in a non-gaming context; game-based learning is the process or practice of learning by using games and serious games are custom-built games with a specific learning objective.

Although three frameworks produce an increase of engagement, motivation (Rodriguez and Santigo 2015) and in their context can be used for a group of people, gamification is the only one that can be applied to any context and used for achieving goals instead of transferring knowledge or gaining skills as the second or the third one.

To implement gamification strategies or models, it is important to take a look at their mechanics, roles, storytelling, and resources (Deterding et alli 2011):

Gamification strategies or models. The DH Education Project. CC BY-SA

1. Mechanics are the rules of the game. Some of the mechanics are acting, role-playing, territory building, etc (see here a list of them).
2. Roles are derived from the characteristics of the people who are participating or the ones who aim to attract. According to Amy Jo Kim, some are competitors, collaborators, expressers, and explorers; Marczewski, for example, says the roles can be socializers, disruptors, philanthropists, free spirits, and achievers. So, there’s no limit on the roles but they are needed to create avatars or personas or to define who is participating in the activity.
3. Storytelling is the story of your activity. One of the most used in literature and classical games is the Hero’s journey or the monomyth.
4. Resources are the materials you are going to use. Some examples are maps, cards, personas or avatar, token, etc. with different purposes (see some examples of gamified resources for social impact on education, cultural heritage, and social design on Wotify)

Finally, the gamification strategies or models are the way all the elements explained above are connected. Some models are MDA, DPE, or Octalysis (i.e.Kusuma et alli 2018)

For more information around models, resources, mechanics, please check the interactive diagram with the full bibliographic references to all the examples from Agora Abierta website.

Implementation of the gamification strategies for cultural heritage

Over the last year, many institutions showed the relevance of playing games or using gamification techniques in the classroom or for educational purposes. The World Economic Forum (2020), for example, highlighted that 21st-century skills can be improved in a digital playful environment. Also, it can be a key role in education for preparing students for challenges and opportunities.

In the cultural heritage sector, some museums followed strategies (Nicholson 2012) and models for getting a meaningful gamified activity, for example, the Tate Museum or the Victoria and Albert Museum used Minecraft as a tool for gamifying the museum. In the North American context, the Newark Museum in the Ballantine House (Newark, New Jersey, USA) created an escape room in the museum to be played by ZOOM for groups and a museum educator as a guide.

In the case of European projects, Locus Ludi created digital games of the ones from Antiquity, or Denkmal Europa, prize Europa Nostra 2019, created an interactive digital history book of Europe.

Gamification also can be a very useful strategy to engage with stakeholders in any topic related to the cultural heritage sector, for example, the National Library of Lithuania developed an initiative to use gamification for training professionals around copyright and right statements or the Europeana Impact Lite Task Force, for example, coordinated by Platoniq, who has experience developing tools (i.e. Wotify), gamified strategies (i.e. Europeana Labs) and participatory processes (i.e. Indices project), created personas and canvas to design a training program using the Europeana Impact Playbook.

Rights labeling workshop at Lithuanian National Library. Lithuanian National Library. CC BY

Following these examples, gamification can be key in the development of the content of the educational heritage educational resources for young people but also for the development by itself in face-to-face sessions or virtual meetings. For example, the idea generation step can be done by creating personas, using canvas in the designing process, using different mechanics to engage stakeholders, and developing a transversal and participative process.

Bibliography

• Deterding S, Dixon D, Khaled R, Nacke L (2011) From game design elements to gamefulness: defining gamification. In: Proceedings of MindTrek. In Proceedings of the 15th International Academic MindTrek Conference: Envisioning Future Media Environments (MindTrek ‘11). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 9–15
• Kusuma, G. P., Wigati, E. K., Utomo, Y., & Putera Suryapranata, L. K. (2018). Analysis of Gamification Models in Education Using MDA Framework. Procedia Computer Science, 135, 385–392.
• Nicholson, S. (2012, October). Strategies for meaningful gamification: Concepts behind transformative play and participatory museums. Presented at Meaningful Play 2012. Lansing, Michigan. Available online at http://scottnicholson.com/pubs/meaningfulstrategies.pdf [Viewed on 16 April 2021]
• Rodriguez, F.; Santigo, R. (2015) Gamificación: Cómo motivar a tu alumnado y mejorar el clima en el aula. (Innovación Educativa) Madrid: Digital-Text. Grupo Océano. 264 pp