Gamified learning: a list of good resources

6 Replies

The main problem in learning a new skill is maintaining the required motivation and discipline, especially in the early stages.  Gamification deals with this problem better than any of the other approaches I’m familiar with.  Over the past few months, I’ve managed to study maths, languages, coding, Chinese characters, and more on a daily basis, with barely any interruptions.  I accomplished this by simply taking advantage of the many gamified learning resources available online for free.  Here are the sites I have tried and can recommend:

  • Codecademy. For learning computer languages (Ruby, Python, PHP, and others).
  • Duolingo. For learning the major Indo-European languages (English, German, French, Italian, Portuguese and Spanish).
  • Khan Academy. For learning maths. They also teach several other disciplines, but they offer mostly videos with only a few exercises.
  • Memrise. For memorizing stuff, especially vocabulary.  The courses vary in quality; the ones on Mandarin Chinese are excellent.
  • Vocabulary.com.  For memorizing English vocabulary.

Am I missing anything? Please leave your suggestions in the comments section. Thanks!

Latest update: 18th January, 2014
  • Alex Wilkinson

    A great list. I’d also recommend HabitRPG, although that is not strictly an instance of gamified *learning*.

    • Guest

      Thanks, Alex. I love HabitRPG; I omitted it from my list only because, as you correctly point out, it is not really an instance of gamified learning.

    • Thanks, Alex. I love HabitRPG; I omitted it from the list above only because it is not, as you correctly point out, an example of gamified learning.

  • Pingback: harvey()

  • Patrick Brinich-Langlois

    Code School is OK if you’re learning web programming, though it costs $29/month. It now has Beeminder integration as well. Code Combat is an extreme example of gamified learning—for me, it was too much game and not enough learning, but somebody might find it useful.

    • Thanks Patrick! I had heard about both of these sites, but haven’t tried either yet. I hope to check them out in the coming weeks.