The SAMR model applied to the gamification of learning

Abstract

During the last years we are living a remarkable emergence of gamification in many ambits of the society as a procedure that pretends to orient the behaviour of people and achieve certain milestones. The educational field does not stay on the sidelines and has adopted gamification as one of the novel teaching methodologies that favour the learning. However, if we look in detail the gamification proposals made on schools at any educational level, we will recognize two relevant facts: on one side, not all the proposals are gamification proposals, and on the other side, some of the gamification experiences reach such a superficial level that cannot justify in many cases its application. Andrej Marczewski, specialist and consultant in gamification, proposed the usage of SAMR model from Ruben Puentedura -a model used in education to analyse and validate the potential of the technologies at the classroom- from the gamification point of view in its most general concept. This article gathers Andrzej Marczewski’s idea and digs deeper from the perspective of the teaching and learning processes to obtain a guide that allows the analysis of gamification teaching experiences from the SAMR model applied to gamification. It also offers clues to determine if a teaching proposal is actually a gamification experience.