Importance of narrative both in gamification and in videogames

In Monday's ICT class we talked about gamification by using Teacher Stories as part of the narrative in our classes .On Tuesday some of my classmates chose TV series such as the Squid Game or The Hunger Games for their presentations regarding gamification and made us take part in a variety of activities all related with the narrative in hand.

On the one hand, I believe that having a narrative throughout the whole course is good, but we should try to avoid overusing it as that might become boring for students or to force them all the time to participate. For me, this would be similar to trying to gamify a class just by having your students do exercises and once a month introducing a Star Wars narrative. It would not be as effective as setting the class with the narrative of Star Wars since the beginning, making them participate in this experience and at the same time having every once in a while a prize in order to encourage your students.

On the other hand, using gamification and narrative can help students know what the topic of the classes will be turning around. For instance, in our class by using Teacher Stories we knew that the whole narrative would be turning around several innovative teachers and their stories. By having a common narrative, students may know at all times what the class is about and it can be used as a way to motivate students and to improve their participation by having all activities be related to the class narrative or by gaining points that can be usefulat the end to achieve a prize. This will be positive as we will be developing students' competitivity as well as team work skills and it will also be useful for their social skills.

To sum up, the only thing I would disagree with using gamification would be trying to make these kind of activities . Don't get me wrong, I just think that we as teachers should be able to vary our repertory without having to resort all the time to the same technique. That does not mean I consider gamification a great technique to use in class just not all the time. i think that if we use it all the time our students will grow tired of it and it will lose all the effect.