
Game-Based Learning Strategies in the Classroom
The difference between game-based learning and gamification is real, testable, and usually skipped — this course doesn't skip it.
About this course
A worksheet with points and a leaderboard bolted on isn’t game-based learning — it’s gamification, and the two get treated as interchangeable in most staff-room conversations about using games in class. That confusion isn’t harmless: it’s the reason so many “gamified” lessons end up feeling like homework wearing a costume. In 2003 James Paul Gee…
Methodology
Sessions start with a short game played by the whole group, and the group then names what the game made people do — that list is what Gee’s principles are checked against.
Participants pull a gamified lesson apart, rebuild it as a game-based activity, and design their own on paper before any screen is involved.
Every prototype is played by colleagues acting as students, so the problems show up in the room and not in a classroom.
What you'll take home
Explain the difference between game-based learning and gamification, and use a short list of Gee’s learning principles to judge a lesson.
Take a gamified lesson apart and rebuild it as a game-based activity.
Design a game-based activity for your own curriculum that works without a screen, and adapt it to a screen where that helps.
Test your activity with colleagues acting as students and revise it from what you observe.
Plan how to use the activity with your own students, including a shorter first version and what to change if it does not work the first time.
Other dates for this course
- 1–5 Feb 2027 Bremen Planned
- 5–9 Apr 2027 İzmir Planned
- 14–18 Jun 2027 Antalya Planned
- 26–30 Jul 2027 Rome Planned
- 6–10 Dec 2027 İzmir Planned
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What's included
Not included
Aggregated across all EMA courses, not specific to this session.
+ educators from 19 more countries across Europe and beyond
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