There is a breadth of psychological research that points to potential cognitive benefits of game play. Games engage and motivate learners while promoting mastery of skills and content knowledge. Further, thoughtfully applying gaming elements and structures to classroom environments, an approach called gamification, has the potential to optimize…

This is the fifth in a series of six papers from the Center on Education Policy exploring issues related to students' motivation to learn. While past papers in this series have examined broad strategies to improve academic motivation that could be implemented across a school, district, or state, this paper focuses specifically on changes within…