by David Thomas

So, want to use a game in your classroom. And you want to give prizes to the winners. Great idea! But before you go out and buy those trophies and Starbucks gift cards, let’s take a moment to consider the problem with prizes.

What problem, you ask? Doesn’t everyone like to win prizes?

The answer is yes! But also no. And to think through why this might be and what we can do about it, let’s go back and look at some classic sociological play theory. We’ll get back to prizes in a miniute

In 1958, Roger Caillois  wrote a perfectly insightful, if problematically titled,  book Man, Play and Games. In trying to understand the hows and whys of play, Callois invented a rubric of play with four basic types.

• Agon: Competitive play. Like chess or soccer.
• Alea: Games of chance. Like gambling.
• Mimicry: Roleplaying. Like playing house or Dungeons and Dragons.
• Ilinx: Disorienting play. Like bungee jumping or riding a rollercoaster.

Setting aside the interesting combinations of his play scheme (like alea and agon, aka Poker), something should stick out to you. Of the four fundamental play types in Caillois schema, only one has anything to do with winning, with prizes. In fact, this was one of the points that Caillois wanted to make, that we conflate agon with play. We think that games with winners are the only kind of play.  Not surprising then, games with winners remains our classroom-go-to when it comes to making teaching more fun.

Agon has it’s place. Games of contest are fun. The Superbowl or Jeopardy wouldn’t be popular if everyone got a medal. We love our competition, and in some contexts, it’s absolutely the right kind of play. In education, we need to be as careful as we need to be gentle. Too many programs and disciplines are already set up as quiet contests, competitions for grades on curves, for scholarships, for graduate school seats and eventually, jobs. There’s already a lot of agon swaggering around the halls of the ivory tower. So, when we bring competiion into the supposedly safe zone of the classroom, it’s no wonder that some students complain or, just as likely, zone out.

Which leads us to the question: What to do about prizes?

Fortunately, there are several good options.

First, look at Caillois’ four categories. You can invite play into your classroom through the non-agon doors. We know about classroom roleplays for a start. How can you enliven those acts of mimicry by making them more imaginative, more playful? And what of chance? Could a roll of the dice to select students in the class to respond to questions increase the playfulness of a typical classroom Q&A? Or what of Ilinx? Are you brave enough to have your class standup and twirl around? Or how about moving the desks around? I ran a class one semester where every class I set up the desks in a different configuration. My favorite was a long snaking line of desks like a rollercoaster. And then we watched roller coaster videos at the start of class. Disorienting? You bet. That was the point.

But what about prizes? What do you do when agon is the right flavor of fun? One option, the favorite of pee wee sports worldwide, is to give everyone a ribbon. If you finish, you win. That’s easy enough. However, that can be very unsatisfying.

A better solution is to pick a prize that is desirable, but relatively cheap. My fellow Professor at Play Lisa discovered that stickers are the perfect solution. They are cheap, so winning a sticker isn’t so much about the joy of beating other people as it is winning the game and getting the prize. And since students have laptops and water bottles, winning a sticker provides a visible way of showing off the accomplishment. And since stickers are cheap, Lisa is able to have lots of contests with lots of winners. It’s not so much that everyone gets a ribbon as it is that anyone has the chance to win.

Contrast this approach of having lots of contest and prizes with an approach that offers an iPad to the top student of the year. Which one is going to motivate the most learners? Clearly, the more likely it is that I can win, the more likely I am to want to play. When you think about it this way, there is no problem with prizes. Done right, prizes encourage play and play, well, makes learning fun.