Classcraft

Draft

Introduction

According to its website (retrieved June 2019), Classcraft Is an Engagement Management System (EMS). It “gives educators a powerful set of tools while connecting real-life intervention with engagement data from existing content, platforms, and systems. This has a profound impact on educational outcomes that are key to student success: academic performance, classroom behavior, social & emotional learning, school climate, attendance & suspension and student motivation.”

Basic use for classroom management

According to Bonvin & Sanchez (2017), “Launched in 2014, Classcraft is a digital role playing game dedicated to classroom management. The objective of Classcraft is to transform the classroom into a role-playing game for the duration of the school year. Teachers can create teams and assign an avatar to students, as well as points and ‘powers’ as rewards for desired behavior. In order to acquire powers, the player must demonstrate behavior that is expected of him by the school, such as participating in class, helping other students. The students are warriors, mages or healers and they can buy and use powers that have an impact on real life. For example, a student who comes five minutes late to class may use the power called “Invisibility’. Consequently, he will not be punished by the teacher. In case if the student does not own this power, the teacher, as game-master, deducts points. A loss of too many points causes death (which means detention in school depending on the rules decided by the game-master). Students can use individual or collaborative powers. For example, mages have the most powerful powers, often benefiting their entire team. The game intends to foster collaboration within students’ teams.”

“The term gamification is generally used to describe the process in which one integrates aspects of play into a situation that is initially not playful. However, [the authors] argue for the use of the term ludicization, following from the idea that it’s less about “making a game” (gamify) than it is about “making it possible for a situation to be seen as ludic” (ludicize).”

Screenshot of classcraft demo class (July 10 2018).

Use for gamification

Classcraft also can be used to create various gamified environments, e.g. a learning scenarios defined in google classroom or Microsoft Office 365.

An example is the freely available Coding lesson plan by Lenny Dutton.

In higher education

According to Nancy Flanagan Knapp (in an AECT 19 presentation), classcraft has high potential for higher education and it should be adapted for this segment. In addition, there is conflict between institutions requiring to turn in assignment through their own LMS and thusly requires learners to work to two separate redundant environment

Links

Official

• https://www.classcraft.com/

Alternatives to classcraft

• ClassDojo (for a younger generation)

Bibliography

Other

• Sanchez, E., Young, S., Jouneau-Sion, C.: Classcraft: from gamification to ludicization of classroom management. Education and Information Technologies, 20(5) (2016) https://doi.org/10.1007/s10639-016-9489-6

• Sanchez, E., Piau-Toffolon, C., Oubahssi, L., Serna, A., Marfisi-Schottman, I., Loup, G., George, S.: Toward a Play Management System for Game-Based Learning. Lecture Notes in Computer Science series, Vol. 9891. (2016) 484-4893.