Gamification and Education with Class Dojo

According to wikipedia, gamification is: “the use of techniques, elements and dynamics of games and leisure in non-recreational activities in order to enhance motivation, as well as to reinforce behavior to solve a problem or obtain a goal”.

All of us who have contact with children, whether as parents or guardians, know how much children love to play. Well, a few years ago, we started to use the elements of play: rules, rewards, competitions, to apply them to the world of education. Both to obtain academic improvements and to encourage certain behaviors. This is what gamification is all about.

What is Class Dojo?

Class Dojo, is a free application that works both on the web and on mobile devices and on all platforms, which helps us when implementing a gamification strategy.

The idea of “Class Dojo” is to help keep track of the progress and advances of students in those aspects that we want to improve.

How does Class Dojo work?

Class dojo is divided into several levels:

College
Class
Group
Student

At the same time it has several roles of use:

School Director
Teacher
Student
Parent

This structure allows a lot of flexibility and at the same time allows us to have everything ordered and controlled. Thus, a student can be in a group, belong to a class and that class can belong to a school. In addition, the school principal can know how his classes are working, the teachers can keep track of their classes and the parents can know the progress of their children.

To achieve the gamification objectives we were talking about at the beginning, we have to define those objectives that we are going to reward and those that we want to avoid. For example, for a specific class we could define as something to reward.

Group work
Creativity
Good treatment with classmates
Care of the school material

And as attitudes that we want to avoid:

Swearing
Talking in class
Hitting other classmates
Running in the corridors

For each class we can define different objectives.

To each of these attitudes and behaviors, we can give a positive a or negative value. These scores we can share with the students so that, as if it were a game, they can see their progress and become more aware of the things they are doing right or wrong.

In short, using everything that children are attracted to in games to achieve progress in their attitudes, behaviors and abilities.

How useful can Class Dojo be?

Class Dojo, apart from rewarding or punishing different attitudes of the students, allows:

Keeping track of student attendance.
Have a clock to keep track of certain activities.
Create a class diary where to write down those milestones that seem important to the teacher about the day to day of the class.
Create a student portfolio to record their progress. We can also allow the student to write in that personal portfolio, to make him/her participate in the process.
Have a direct communication with the parents, both of the scores and of each student’s diary, so that the parent has a more direct information of the student’s progress. Or communicate directly with the parent about any incident.

In short, Class Dojo is a teaching aid that each school principal, teacher, student or parent can customize and adapt to their own way of understanding education.