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Learning can sometimes be exhausting, especially when you’re trying too hard, but still failing to remember all the necessary facts. However, there are ways to make learning easier and more dynamic. The trick is to gamify it, which means turning it into a game-like activity and making it more fun in order for it to be more effective. Here are some ways to do this.
Turn to cards
The simplest way to make studying more fun is by making cards for any topic that you’re having problems with. The possibilities are many, from how you create the cards, to how you use them. For example, your cards can contain key words, definitions, explanations, lists and even pictures. And when you make them, you can turn your study time into a Jeopardy-like quiz show, a matching game, guessing game, or any other game you can think of. These activities include some game elements, such as immediate feedback, opportunities to level up and social connection, which can motivate you and make studying simpler.
Be artistic
Turning your study session into a game of Pictionary sounds fun? Presenting your syllabus through pictures can be a great way to gamify your learning and remember things with more ease. The key is to have good notes, so that you can turn them into anything from colorful mind maps, to amusing comic books. This could be especially useful when preparing for one of the more important tests. So, in case your notes aren’t comprehensive or well-organized, you can find neat VCE notes online and turn them into art of your choice. Make your own map of the world by drawing little pictures of how you perceive different nations and regions, or draw caricatures of scientists with their discoveries or inventions to memorize them without difficulty. Gamifying this further could be achieved through including other people and making it a competition in which you can progress, get points or rewards and even collaborate with others when trying to present something through art.
Alternate realities
This activity is the perfect one for those with an imaginative mind. It uses narrative and characters and offers the possibility of collaborative problem solving, if you decide to include your peers, which are common elements of gamification. For instance, if you’re studying history and can’t make heads or tails of all the names, dates and events, try imagining a world in which things happened completely differently, or they happened at a different time period. What if Napoleon had fallen in love and deserted his troops? What if Columbus had arrived in America two hundred years later? As simple as these examples might be, you get the point. Similarly, you could ask yourself what life on Earth would be like if gravity was stronger or weaker than it is, or what the world’s geography or political situation would be if the continents were differently positioned. By asking questions like these and coming up with funny or interesting answers, you’ll have less trouble with remembering what things are like now and why.
Role-playing
This could be another way to gamify studying by introducing narrative and characters, social connection, but also collaborative problem solving and scaffolded learning to facilitate the whole process. You can act out whole lessons, or ‘play school’ with one or more study partners, where each of you, in turns, can be the teacher to the others. Learning by teaching is a very effective method, so use it to improve your study skills and learn things in more detail and with less effort.
Applying gamification to your studying can increase your productivity and bring some joy to an otherwise stressful task. When you view learning as a game, you’ll be more engaged in it and more focused on your curriculum, so don’t hesitate to try it straight away.
