In this series of blog posts, I’ll be examining the emerging pedagogy of gamification and taking a look at how it might meet some of the educational needs of working paramedics.

Interest in the popularity of computer games, their strong intrinsic motivational effects, and how they might inform and contribute to the learning process dates back at least to the 1980s (e.g. Malone, 1981). More recently this interest has given rise to the term “gamification” and which gained prominence around 2008 (Al-Rayes et al., 2022).

According to one of the most commonly cited definitions, gamification or gamified learning is the use of game design elements in non-game contexts (Deterding et al., 2011).

Preferring to emphasise process over elements, Werbach (2014, p. 266) described gamification as “the process of making activities more game-like”. Sailer et al. (2017) combined both views and contended that gamification can be thought of as the process of selection, application, implementation and integration of game design elements, rather than simply the use of them – in other words, gamification can be defined as the process of making activities in non-game contexts more game-like by using game design elements (Sailer et al., 2017).

In either case, game features like goals, rules, feedback, reward and promotion (Tóth & Tóvölgyi, 2016), immersion, conflict, and challenge (Bedwell et al., 2012), narrative (Armstrong & Landers, 2017), and volition (R. Landers et al., 2019)are deployed, using one or more elements such as leader-boards, points, levels, badges, and progress bars, to improve motivation and engagement, and ultimately to influence outcomes, such as increased learning (Landers et al., 2018).

The learning context in which I’ll consider the discussion of gamification is education for health care professionals, specifically paramedics who engage with a range of clinical settings requiring a wide variety of technical and non-technical skills.

The focus of the investigation is what, if anything, might gamification have to offer the working paramedic engaged in a process of life-long learning related to prehospital care?