Part 1. Gamification: “The education system as a product: system audit

We are all familiar with the ongoing educational process: attending school or university, scheduled classes, completing academic assignments, tests and preparing for exams.

History and practice show its effectiveness, but how effective is it really?

In this article, I propose to look at the education system from the point of view of creating a product for the end user, i.e. understand how to improve the efficiency of this system using the knowledge/technologies that humanity has acquired over the past decades.

Let's identify the problems that arise in the current version of the education system (hereinafter referred to as ES).

So, the problems of the current CO

1) There is no adequate system for assessing the effectiveness of CO.

Yes, schools have grades, there are Unified State Examinations, Olympiads, certificates, diplomas, etc. But let's be frank: school grades and grades in higher educational institutions (as well as in specialized ones) most often reflect the subjective perception/attitude of the teacher towards a particular student.

And since we are dealing with subjective assessments, there is no need to talk about “adequacy”. It is clear that in any mass data set there will be various deviations, but we still need a system that is easier to track (asking every teacher about their assessment of each student is inefficient).

The Olympiads and the Unified State Exam appear more transparent, but this is very generalized data that does not in any way help the end user understand and use the current situation to their advantage. (Explanation: The state rather needs the Unified State Exam to understand where the general level of education is heading than for you or your child to understand where to go personally.)

2) The educational system is “lost”

The main task of the modern education system is to create the necessary, adequate set of knowledge and skills that contribute to the formation of a socially healthy and professionally competent individual who would safely meet the needs of society.

Translated: “The earth is round, don’t kill, don’t steal, don’t drink, be a professional in your field, but as society needs it, not in Dota 2.”

At the moment, only a small share of the educational system is trying to adequately fulfill its functions; I think most people are familiar with the story: “The main thing is to get any diploma”when thousands of “qualified” economists/psychologists/philosophers, etc. are graduated annually, who will never work in their specialty.

Why do universities/specialized educational institutions serve these specialties? Because there is a steady demand for “higher education”, and it doesn’t matter what direction or quality this education is.

At the same time, the country is officially experiencing a so-called “staff shortage”, when there are many vacant positions for highly sought-after professions (and this is not only IT, but also doctors, engineers and other in-demand specialists in various fields). However, instead of creating additional places for these specialties, providing benefits and additional training courses, educational institutions simply fill their quota.
Large companies are increasingly opening their own courses and building production and educational complexes with dormitories for students at their enterprises.

3) Lack of “flexibility” of the educational system

The current stage of human development seems to be rapidly progressing technologies, when global improvements in both production methods and information processing, quality of services, etc. can occur every 1–2 years.

Unfortunately, the modern education system is not designed for the current stage of development; what you learn in 1 year at an educational institution will be out of date by at least 2 years (since training programs are approved in advance and are extremely rarely adjusted in accordance with current technologies, even if they have proven to be effective).

This creates a precedent when completing training courses that last a couple of months becomes a priority when choosing candidates for employment rather than professional higher education in a specific specialty. Which further depreciates the effectiveness of the educational system as a whole.

As one friend of mine likes to repeat: “it’s better to work as a programmer for 4 years than to study for 4 years as a programmer,” although at the moment this applies to any area, from services to production, etc.

4) Integration into work activities

Returning to the USSR, we will see that studying at a specialized educational institution in a certain specialty practically guaranteed you a job in this very specialty and that you would be in demand (naturally, we ignore all other disadvantages, this example is given only to show how “ideally” education should work: you study in your specialty = then you work in this very specialty).

The fact that at the moment you are not in demand after graduating and receiving your specialty means one of two things:

• first, your specialty is not in demand on the personnel market;

• second, the level of training/knowledge/skills that you received during your training does not meet the employers’ requirements for this specialty.

5) Teaching methods

Can you ride a bike? Do you remember how to play Dandy/PSP/Heroes/Tekken/NFS/GTA/Minecraft etc? Maybe you remember the sequence of keystrokes / leveling up / your favorite brand and tuning element / crafting recipe?

I think most of us have some kind of game/entertainment that we remember quite well from childhood, and even if we don’t remember, give it to us, and we will be there like a duck to water. But will you remember what was taught to you in the first / subsequent grades, even if given the same textbook? For the most part, we were not very interested in this.

So why does this happen? The answer is simple: applicable knowledge always prevails over non-applicable knowledge.

You remembered a key combination / favorite brand / crafting recipe because you needed to use them at that moment, and you got a specific result from this application, and exactly the result that you yourself wanted to get.
But when a teacher lectures you on history or explains how to solve a math problem, you are either receiving information that is not applicable at the moment, or you are solving a problem that you personally do not need to solve.

This is the principle of any gamification – to turn information and problem solving into a conscious, personally motivated action aimed at a specific result.

And if previously it would have been too much of a task for a teacher to turn every lesson into a “game” or “test”, now technology can take over all this, and the teacher can turn from a boring broadcaster and tortured explainer into a mentor/curator/consultant /teacher.

Your child comes to school and, instead of a lesson, sits down in a specially designed game with freedom of action, where, just like in modern games, he can create a character and interact with other players/students/teachers. However, in this game we don’t just have “quests”, “races”, “crafting system” or “survival”, but a certain platform where through the game you learn everything the same as in the lessons (and these are not those strange ” state educational projects”, but a full-fledged game in MMO format, etc.).
(Naturally, in the future we will take into account that we do not want the entire education system to be built on “sitting at the computer”; in future articles I will analyze the future responsibilities of teachers and technologies that will allow for an active lifestyle.)

When you write to the chat, errors are automatically pointed out to you, offering to correct them, where the crafting system can teach you physics/mathematics/chemistry (which, by the way, Microsoft has already done at one time through its modification of Minecraft: Minecraft Education), where the world and interactions/events can reflect real history, and travel points can reflect different cities/eras, NPC characters and their biographies, etc., etc.).

Sure, it sounds a little cheesy, but if you think about the influence of games on our lives, you will find many examples of how the knowledge gained from games has become applicable in real life.

For example, someone, having played enough of a racing game, began to understand cars better. Another person learned from Minecraft that sand can be used to create glass. And someone, playing Civilization, gained new knowledge about history. And there are many such examples. You just have to look back and remember the games we played.

Another question that is also worth raising at this point is who is responsible for the effectiveness of education?

If your child didn't learn something at school, who's to blame? Teacher? He may say that he gave the child this information, and you will not be able to check on what he is teaching your children every day. Is the child to blame? Don't put the responsibility on the person you have to teach. Are you to blame? If you are forced to teach your child everything yourself, then why do we need an education system?

The problem is that current education methods completely diffuse responsibility for the quality of education among all participants, and it is incredibly difficult to blame one side or another. But ultimately, the responsibility will still fall on your child.

In a system where every action can be tracked, where learning is not based on the subjective actions of a particular teacher, it will always be clear where the ears come from.

Naturally, it is impossible to analyze everything in one article; this is just the beginning of a series of posts regarding the gamification of education in general, where in this particular one we superficially examined the most basic problems of the current system.

In subsequent articles, I plan to examine each of the problems in more detail, consider the problems of this methodology, describe possible options for solving the problems of the education system, and go over many other important points.

If anyone has read this far, kudos to you, I hope it wasn’t a waste of your time. Everything written is part of my project on reforms in the education system. Thank you for your time.