Heaptalk, Jakarta — Currently, Indonesia has started to enter the era of revolution 4.0, where many changes have occurred in all fields. Including in the field of education and learning. The changes in the world of education today are so significant by starting to use the latest methods, namely starting to leave conventional teaching methods.
Face-to-face communication, tracking lessons with books, collecting hardcopy assignments, which of course will take some time as many tasks are stored long and hard to find when needed. The learning method is considered a tedious way, where students cannot explore in search of learning for the number of files that have been collected.
For this reason, TitikPintar, an Edtech startup founded by Robbert Deusing in 2019, is likely focusing on providing a gamification learning model designed for elementary school students. Cited from Dailysocial, this startup is now targetting recruiting 1000 teachers and reaching 10.000 active users after they bag undisclosed funding from the Indonesia Women Empowerment Fund (IWEF) – Moonshot Ventures this year.
The gamification itself is the application of game strategies into teaching and learning activities. So that gamification is expected to help increase student learning motivation so that students can experience a pleasant but effective and practical learning experience to remain enthusiastic about learning without feeling bored.
This method is expected to increase students’ interest in learning to motivate them to explore their learning process in a more interactive and fun way.
During the Webinar Panel discussion initiated by TitikPintar on six may 2021 that also presented by Ellis Bartholomeus (author of the book a “Main Untuk Menang”, internship coach, and game developer), Wempy Dyocta Koto (education enthusiast, author of a book “Kelas Dunia”), and Robbert Deusing itself as (CEO Titik Pintar), TitikPintar evince that the gamification concept brought in education fields can contribute something – more expected to improve the interest of young age students to learn in a fun way.
“So from now on and for the upcoming moment, we are focusing on developing a learning method carried out with the concept of technology and gamification inside of an application called TitikPintar,” Robbert Deusing said.
Especially in the state of the Covid 19 pandemic, where students cannot meet face-to-face with teachers, currently, schools are using online learning methods. The challenge faced by teachers is how students can still study normally, even though they are learning from home. Therefore, technology in education is very reliable.
The gamification learning method was created following an era where students preferred to play games rather than learn. Therefore the gamification method can be applied to educational management at a higher level of education.
Cited from Ellis Bartholomeus, the main challenge that both teachers and parents likely experienced, especially when they are learning from home, is that the students can be easily disturbed by the Youtube content rather than on the paper-based learning materials.
“So it indicates that the students at that young age are more interested in something interactive. That’s why the gamification model is suited to be conveyed alongside the education curriculum,” Ellis expressed during the webinar.
While, from the Wempy Dyocta Koto perspective, the gamification education methodology can yield a new education culture to be more collaborative, specialized, and competitive. The collaborative aspects described Wempy, can be shown by how the students can now help other students that always come last, like giving them credits and appreciation. It would be very easy for them since it facilitates users to have an adjacent interaction like in the game, for example, become a party, buddies, sending a gift, finishing quest or tasks together, and many more.
It also can spark off students’ motivations to learn something that they really like. For example, the students who are strong or interested in math can be more specialized by following the rule of the game that is arrayed in line with the current curriculum. It can be replicated to those who like science, English, sports, arts, and many more.
Still, the education gamification model may have some obstacles. Particularly for the students that accessed the app (TitikPintar) in remote areas like in the rural area, or on the sites that are not reachable by the 4G/5G internet. Thus, it would be important homework for the government to bring the internet evenly distributed so that students in that area can participate in accessing the value of gamification model learning.