Below is a great infographic on Gamification in Education. It is from Knewton Learning. The Gamification in Education infographic emphasizes the amount of time spent by people playing games in other areas of life and begs the question of whether the intrinsic values of gamification can also be incorporated into education, to increase the engagement, graduation, and important skills needed by students in the future.

As I’ve written in previous posts, it’s first important to distinguish Game-based Learning from Gamification, while recognizing there are measurable cognitive, social, emotional, and learning increases, with successful implementation.

Gamification in Education

Some signification data points from the Infographic include:

28 Million people harvest crops on FarmVille EVERY day.
Over 5 Million play an average of 45 hours A WEEK of games.
As a planet, we spend 3 BILLION HOURS A WEEK playing video and computer games.
What elements of gaming can we harness for EDUCATIONAL purposes?

Game players regularly exhibit persistence, risk-taking, attention to detai, and problem-solving–all behavious that ideally wold be demonstrated in school. [The Education Arcade at MIT]

1.2 Million students in the US fail to graduate from high school.
The default environment of school often results in undesirable outcomes such as disengagement, cheating, learned helplessness, and dropping out.[Jody Lee and Jessica Hammer at Columbia Teachers College]

Original Source of Infographic and more on Gamification in Education: http://www.knewton.com/gamification-education/

More information on Gamification in Education

Feel free to visit my Gamification in Education curation page at: http://www.scoop.it/t/gamification-in-education