U.S. Department of Education Encourages Gamified Learning, to Host Game-Based Learning Summit

Recently, the U.S. Department of Education announced it will host the first Game-Based Learning Summit in New York at the end of this month, inviting education experts, students, teachers, game publishers, and developers to attend.

Richard Culatta, Director of the Office of Educational Technology at the Department of Education, stated that one of the reasons for hosting the summit is to facilitate communication between game developers and teachers and school leaders, so that games can be created to better meet educational needs.

According to the U.S. Department of Education, the average American student spends 10,000 hours playing video games by the end of middle school, roughly the same amount of time they spend in the classroom. For this reason, the Department hopes to better leverage video games to improve student education levels.

Currently, companies both domestically and internationally are exploring gamified learning. Among foreign products, Mars Generation One aims to cultivate middle school students' STEM skills through educational games, allowing them to build their own nation on Mars, while KnowRe uses games to spark children's interest in learning math. In China, similar examples can be found: Zuoyebang integrates gamification into its question bank, and NetDragon is establishing a smart education application R&D center to study gamification in online education.

Gamification in education is a worthwhile approach to enhance the learning effectiveness of online students. In 2014, the strong growth of online education in China revealed not only opportunities but also challenges. How to ensure the healthy development of online education is a topic worth exploring and studying in depth. Unlike traditional offline education, online education offers significant flexibility in time and space, but its learning effectiveness has long been criticized. The introduction of gamification in online education is a path worth trying for those in the field.

Polyv, tailored to the characteristics of the online education industry, has launched a series of video services. Among them, the newly introduced video bullet comment feature enhances communication between teachers and students, as well as among students themselves, while also strengthening the entertainment aspect of online education.