How Quizac uses Spaced-Repetition with Gamification to enhance learning.
Every day, 3 things beep in our heart @Quizacapp
- How can we prolong the rate of retention for every student?
- How can we do it in a fun and exciting way?
- How can we replicate every Quizac success in the classroom?
Learning is laborious and sometimes even boring. Most especially, in the part of the world where I found myself. In Nigeria, your right to quality education comes at the demand for its success, no matter the learning environment or the means of learning. Failure is not a choice. However, despite the undying effort of most students to achieve academic excellence, average performance continues to wane. Take, for instance, the statistics for the recently concluded 2019 UTME exam shows only 23.8% of the registered candidate score above the pass mark of 200 compares to 45% from 8years back.
While the education system itself seems retrogressing, more can be done to embrace fun learning and achieve superb academic excellence. But first, what is the problem for most students? Is it a low IQ? Well, Nope. The problem isn’t because most students aren’t smart, the problem has much to do with the pattern of learning. An average student crams loads of material getting ready for tests and exams and when the result comes, hope is dashed.
This reading strategy for most students is painful. Worst, everything is forgotten when needed the most. Quizac uses decades of proven spaced repetition concept to prolong students’ retention for students.
So, What is Spaced-Repetition and How does it affect Learning.
Spaced-Repetition is cognitive learning techniques that ensure the subsequent review of past learned material to maximize the physiological spacing effects.
To break that down, with spaced-repetition, learning works better when there is considerably spaced between 2 learning intervals. For each interval, you’re asked to answer what was learned from the previous and a new mastery level is formed. This mastery guides on what you need to keep learning in subsequent intervals.
How the learning happens is not the magic behind the concept but the interval of time the learning needs to happen. This interval is called the space period and can make every learning go wrong if wrongly chosen.
Quizac models the spaced-repetition algorithm using the SuperMemo 2 algorithm developed by Piotr Woźniak, A Prof. from the Poznań University of Technology in Poland.
More than Retention, Learning needs to be engaging and fun.
According to an attention research by Giles RM, Johnson MR, Knight KE, Zammett S, Weinman J. Recall of lecture information: a question of what, when and where, it was found that the attention rate of student rises from 0 minutes of lecture and best between 15–30 minutes, then fall drastically afterward. Learning may occur between this short period using cognitive learning like spaced-repetition. Afterward, learning fails as attention drops.
In order to combat this, We’re employing the concept of gamification to prolong attention and increase motivation to keep learning for as long as possible.
Gamification is an integration of game elements and game thinking in activities that are not games. Using game mechanics improves motivation and learning in formal and informal conditions.
Our major introduction of Gamification is to improve the attention span of students via engagement.
Studies about how the brain process deal with attention reveals that 2 factors can be associated:
- Motivation and
- Arousal.
MOTIVATION
The main problems in modern education are related to the lack of motivation of students to participate actively in the learning process. Because of that, teachers try to use new techniques and approaches to provoke students’ activity and motivate them to participate. One possible solution is to reward the efforts and achieved results by awards, which leads to increased motivation for participation and activity. That decision is based on the use of game elements in the learning process.
Most gamified learning solutions have done well by leveraging motivation to improve learning.
For example, Deloitte Leadership Academy, an online program for training its own employees as well as customers, reported an active increment of participation and completion by 37% after gamifying the learning experience. This is incongruent with Gabe Zichermann, cited by (Giang, 2013), that the use of game mechanics improves the abilities to learn something new by 40%.
AROUSAL
Arousal, on the other hand, refers to a general level of activity and a measure of nonspecific stimulation of a student’s cerebral cortex. While many solutions have done well in motivating students to prolong engagement, few have been done in arousing their mind to keep learning.
With our peering approach used in our gamification, we stand a good chance to improve student arousal through healthy competition with one another as validated by a comment from one of our app users.
Games are more interesting when played with others. Because it increases competitiveness which helps to further increase the attention process of the student.
The benefit of our peering approach is to raise the attentional focus of the student.
Research suggests that most students easily dissuade because the default attentional system has an inbuilt bias for high contrast, novelty, and competition. low-contrast, non-emotional and non-competitive tasks tend to bore the students who are used to spending hours watching TV, with emphasis on high-contrast, bizarre, and captivating programming, which attracts active attention.
Through the Quizac Leaderboard, Reward system and Badges, we want to improve student motivation for learning on the app. Through our peering system, we want to even raise the bar higher by increasing arousal to healthy competition to keep learning.
link: Gamification impact of learning and development
