Game Based Learning vs Gamification

Digital games are becoming increasingly popular among young people, and the games market has an estimated growth of 16.38% by 2020. The popularity of digital games can still be illust rated by the growing number of companies, conferences and articles devoted to the theme. At the same time, the continuous evolution of information and communication technologies (ICT) is leading to increased sophistication and potential of these games and to their development for mobile devices.

Educational games for mobile devices are also becoming popular and their sales have surpassed non-mobile games. Mobile devices seem to give their users a very strong sense of control and ownership which has been highlighted in research on motivation as a key motivational factor.

The idea of control has often been discussed in the context of the use of technology in learning. Ideally students should perceive themselves as being in control of their learning process. Thus, the importance of freedom to define the tasks in which the students want to be involved is supported by the emphasis on control and motivation for learning. 

There is also an increasing recognition about the need to integrate all students (with and without special educational needs) into regular education, as wel l as the impor tance of doing it properly. There’s a need for the development of learning approaches based on the media used by learners, which very definitely include games. The use of digital games as learning tools is known as Game-Based Learning. A concept related to Game-Based Learning is gamification. Gamification applies elements associated with video games (game mechanics and game dynamics) in non-game applications to engage the student in the learning process.