There’s a strange phenomenon that happens often in my classroom. I don’t assign seats to my students. As high schoolers, I want them to be mature and responsible for their own learning. If they can sit with friends and still accomplish that, then great. I’ll move specific students if necessary, but ultimately, they make the decision, which means they don’t have a specific place that they have to sit. Nor do they have to sit there every day.
And yet, they will inevitably pick one seat at the beginning of the year and sit there for the rest of the year. And if someone else sits in “their” seat, they will get upset. I’ve seen the same thing happen in churches as well. What is it that makes us so protective of something as menial as a chair?
That’s Core Drive 4: Ownership & Possession.
Mine!
From a very early age, children learn, “Mine!” It’s in our nature to be very possessive, especially when it comes to things we own. When something is “ours,” it automatically gains a lot more value. So anything we can do to make students feel like they have ownership in our classes will automatically make it more valuable. This is Core Drive 4: Ownership & Possession.
Core Drive 4 is “a motivation that is driven by our feelings or owning something, and consequently the desire to improve, protect, and obtain more of it.”1 When students feel like they own something in your classroom, they are more likely to protect it. We all know how students treat materials that aren’t theirs. Let them sit wherever they want to, though, and all of a sudden that chair is “theirs,” and they get upset if someone else is sitting in their seat.
This is actually something that has been a push in education in recent years–making real-world connections to our curriculum. We’re trying to get student to take possession of skills in a way that relates to them. How do we get students to take ownership of their learning and personalize it to their real-life situations?
“Core Drive 4: Ownership & Possession is a powerful motivator that can attract us to do many irrational things but could also give us great emotional comfort and a sense of well-being.”2
Yukai Chou
Game Design Techniques
When designing elements of Core Drive 4, think about ways that you can shift ownership from you to students. What kinds of things can they take control of? What kinds of things can they make for themselves?
| Technique | Description | Technique | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| Status Points | Gain points (EXP) for completing tasks. Points accumulate and don’t go away, unless penalized. Typically, you level up and gain more abilities with this. | Boosters | User obtains something to help them achieve a win-state effectively |
| Achievement Symbol | Badge, star, belt, hats, uniforms, trophies, medals, etc. that symbolize an achievement. Key point: it must symbolize an achievement, something that has been earned in some way. | Monitor Attachment | Allows users to develop more ownership towards something such that they are constantly monitoring or paying attention to it. (i.e. tracking stats and visits on a website) |
| Fixed Action Reward or “Earned Lunch” | A reward given after a consistent, repeatable action, reinforcing behavior through predictable and regular incentives. This helps establish habits and encourages routine engagement. | Build-from-Scratch | Allow users to build something from scratch. Makes them feel like they own it. The technique should not distract users from the First Major Win-State. |
| Virtual Goods | Virtual items that users can obtain and possess | Exchangeable Points | Points that can be used. Players gain points, but can use them in exchange for something. It’s the currency of the game. |
| Avatar | A customizable representation of the user within a system. Avatars personalize the experience, giving users a sense of identity and ownership. | Streaking | Encouraging users to maintain a consistent pattern of behavior over time. This technique uses visual indicators, like streak counters, to motivate continuous engagement. |
| Collection Sets | Give users a few items, characters, or badges, and then tell them that it’s part of a set that follows a certain theme. This creates a desire to collect all the elements and complete the set. | Alfred Effect | Users feel that a product or service is so personalized to their own needs that they cannot imagine using something else. |
| Free Lunch | Giving away freebies that are not normally free to selected people in such a way that it binds them to a larger theme. Can make users feel special and encourage them to take further action. | Rare Items | Difficult to obtain items (or only available during certain times) |
| Carrot | Offering a positive incentive or reward to motivate behavior. This contrasts with using negative reinforcement (stick). |
What can look like in the classroom?
While a lot of these Game Techniques (like Virtual Goods or Avatars) are a lot more involved and require more design skill, there are still plenty of ways to allow students to feel a sense of ownership and possession. The key is to give them a sense of owning something that motivates them to improve, protect, or gain more of it. Here are a few ideas I have related to Core Drive 4.
- I mentioned Achievement Symbols with Core Drive 2, but these can also have a significant impact on students feeling of ownership. It doesn’t have to be anything major, just a digital sticker for an accomplishment. Tony Vincent has a great presentation for creating and sharing digital stickers. Pair this up with Collection Sets, and you can have students working hard to earn all the stickers, similar to the desire to collect every Pokemon.
- The Build-from-Scratch Game Technique is a great way to build ownership into the curriculum. Instead of creating something like a quiz for the class, have them build the quiz. Give them the focus skills and let them design it. As a bonus, they can have other groups or classes take the quiz to see how they do.
These are some ideas I’ve been able to come up with. What about you? What ideas sparked to life? Please share in the comments section.
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