Using game-based learning in the classroom helps engage students by directly involving them in the learning process. The result? Improved retention of material, increased student engagement, and an overall enjoyable learning environment. Below is a video that explains one of the ways you can use game-based learning in your classroom.

How can productive struggle foster the learning process in students' classroom experiences? Education researcher and interactive game developer Ki Karou shares a selection of game-based learning strategies that can develop students' capacity for productive struggle. The ultimate goal is to develop our students into curious, tenacious and creative problem solvers.

How to Successfully Implement Classroom Games

So, you've picked an appropriate and engaging classroom game, and your students are bubbling with anticipation. Now, you need to actually put your game to use in the classroom. Follow these steps to ensure success!

1. Have a Concrete Plan in Mind

This sounds obvious, but it's true. Are your students going to play every day or only on certain days? Before or after lectures? For how long? At home or in the classroom? How you administer the game is certainly up to you, but we've found that students are often so eager to play classroom video games that they end up asking for extra home assignments involving these games (yes, you read that correctly — students asking for more homework). In that case, we recommend you get students' parents on board and make sure they're aware that these games are being used as an essential component of their children's coursework.

2. Decide on the Right Format

With the availability of smartphones and handheld devices, digital games are very popular among children and teens; these are an obvious choice for classroom games if your school has a computer lab or in-class devices.

If digital games won't work, you can use other kinds of in-class activities to get students out of their seats and eager to participate, like group labs, in-class presentations, Jeopardy-style assessments, and more. To that end, consider if you'd like your students to work independently or collaboratively. Most students are vocal and active in group work, and this allows them to develop their social and interpersonal skills. But not every size fits all — other students do prefer independent work. And in some classes, group work simply doesn't make sense.

Bottom line? Make sure the format you decide on works for you and your students and is easy to implement.

3. Assess Effectiveness, Gather Feedback, and Iterate

At the end of the day, you need to make sure the games you implement are actually helping students master the content and make progress in your classroom. With educational digital games, it's especially easy if your students have their own accounts and a built-in means of measuring progress and participation, like XP (Experience Points) earned. These metrics usually correlate well to the amount of effort students put into practicing the concepts they learn in class.

Moreover, even though you're the sole authority in your classroom, students should have some say in how they learn. If you find that some students are struggling with the format you've chosen, you should seek feedback from everyone to ensure that your games are working well. For example, if difficulty doesn't scale well and some students are consistently underperforming, you can split your class into tiered groups, where each tier receives challenges and activities that match its level of proficiency.

Below is also a podcast which might give you ideas for using game-based learning in your classroom:

Now, answer the following questions related to implementing GBL in classroom.