1) Serious games, 2) Virtual scenarios (virtual patients in medical education), 3) Simulations with debriefing at the end of the simulation session.

I would recommend looking at the serious games research community. Serious games are more prevalent at the primary and secondary education levels but there are some examples. There was a recent review in Computers & Education. I personally prefer robotics to serious games in the context of mathematics education because the are kinaesthetic and allow both a constructivistic approach.

Coming from the logistics and supply chain management disciplines, we are fortunate to have several suitable management games to aid our teaching.

The most well renowned is the 'Beer Game' which provides students with the opportunity to practice real ordering, inventory and stock cost scenarios. 

Indeed only last week at a local logistics conference the leading brewer introduced the delegates to the game.

Visit www.beergame.org where facilitation software is available free of charge for use in higher education. Give it a try !

Dear Mário, I found the distinction between gamification and game-based learning (as explained in the embedded post) of value.

http://inservice.ascd.org/the-difference-between-gamification-and-game-based-learning/

There's a lot of interesting work in this area. As Leona mentions, there's gamification, which generally uses extrinsic motivation as it's primary mechanic (e.g., points and/or badges); game-based learning, which literally uses games to teach (e.g., minecraft, mathblaster); and then there's more recent work under the umbrella of game-inspired design (the process) or gameful courses (the outcome), which use games as a metaphor to redesign learning environments.

Regardless of your particular interest, the Games, Learning, and Society conference proceedings (link below) is a great place to start. You can also click on my profile to see a few publications my colleagues and I have written on the subject. 

http://press.etc.cmu.edu/content/gls-90-conference-proceedings

I believe it's possible to mix gamification with social networks in order to improve students engagement. For example, by creating a group on Facebook and posting exercises, tips and other useful information (related to the subject of the class) that can be visualized, downloaded and shared among the students. Also there is the book written by Lee Sheldon (The Multiplayer Classroom: Designing Coursework as a Game) where the author describes some user cases of gamification in the classroom (in higher education). Hope this was useful 

Dear Mário, I enclose information about the suggested relationship between student motivation and gamification and a few examples of the application of gamification in education.

http://www.teachthought.com/learning/complete-gamification-framework-comprehensive-framework-for-student-motivation/

http://www.yukaichou.com/gamification-examples/top-10-education-gamification-examples/#.VHvFyqgo5SB

It largely depends on how you're defining gamification. I've been a designer and researcher of learning games for several years, and there are very different approaches grown out of varying perspectives on contemporary learning theory.

By and large, it will help to think of gamification as applying particular game elements/mechanics like badges, points, etc. to a learning environment as behavioral reinforcement. By contrast, game-based learning is creating a comprehensive game environment (virtual, board game, or other) through which learners interact with and demonstrate particular real world skills. Gamification is primarily about operant conditioning, while game-based learning is more closely related to anchored instruction/situated cognition.

Games are very good at one thing: teaching people how to play them. That means if your game and learning objectives are properly aligned, you can more easily move students closer to the target skill/content using the game's mechanics as leverage. If you're considering building your own game-based learning tool, I'd recommend starting with a UBD design model (i.e., a top-down approach built out of your learning objectives). Many educational game designers mistakenly neglect the alignment of game and learning objectives, which means learners aren't being guided to perform the actions or demonstrating the skills we want them to transfer to the real world. The most effective way to encourage that transfer is to pair game and learning objectives at a 1:1 ratio, have students fulfill the objective(s), and then reflect on it/them with the help of a more knowledgeable other (e.g., instructor). 

My team generally starts the creation of a new educational game using core instructional design principles and a needs analysis:

• Who are you designing for?
• What are the learning objectives you want to fulfill?
• What's the timeline you're working on?
• Is there an existing story/narrative that aligns nicely with your instructional goals?

Once we're confident in our answers, we begin structuring course objective(s) above unit objectives above individual lesson objectives. This gives us an idea of how everything should fit together and serves as a backbone for the text-based adventure's narrative. It often helps to view things from the student perspective: if you're a student in the class, what's the story you're going to tell about school when you go home at night? Taking something like Star Wars as an example, the linchpin moments might be structured as:

• Primary Story Arc (i.e., Course-Level Objective): Three individuals come together to save the galaxy
• Secondary Story Arcs (i.e., Unit-Level Objectives): Boy overcomes his lot in life to become a hero; Woman meets others and recruits them to her cause; Man overcomes personal flaws to assist the hero; Villain defeats hero's mentor but falls at the hands of the hero
• Tertiary Story Arcs (i.e., Lesson-Level Objectives): Woman saves strategic information in a robot and helps him escape from her invaded spaceship (etc.)

At that point, we start building a story and characters to provide the students with the scaffolding necessary to meet the learning objectives. I've found in the course of my research that engagement is at least somewhat governed by the quality of story and character development, so it might be helpful to recruit a solid creative writer (if available). If not, it shouldn't be a major issue--you'll learn through iterative design what works and what doesn't with or without a professional writer. The key is to make sure you never lose sight of your learning objectives. All of your writing prompts should be identical to real world skills/learning objectives, so if you want students to learn persuasive communication skills, the associated prompt would be "Persuade [Insert Character Name Here] to join you." I can't overstate the importance of this 1:1 alignment enough--it's the single-biggest missing element I find when evaluating educational game mechanics (despite how obvious it might seem).

Next, we consider how it all looks in action. You won't be able (and shouldn't try) to predict how students will control their characters, but you should consider how you might respond to positive, negative, and neutral behaviors. If a student gets off track, how will you re-engage them? If they attack a non-player character, how will you respond? If they positively contribute to the story's development, will there be an in-game incentive to continue doing so? We call this a "sandbox-on-rails" system: students can act freely within an individual immersion session, but we continue pressing ahead to meet the linchpin moments/learning objectives/prompts described above (i.e., the equivalent of riding in a sandbox traveling on a train track--you can do what you like in the sandbox, but you'll always be moving ahead to the next station stop).

Finally, we try to outline reflective discussion that follows play. What questions will you ask to help students see the invariance between the game experience and the real world? How will they transfer their newly learned skills? What relationship do the ideas/concepts from the story have with their day-to-day lives? This is the make or break moment for a text-based adventure since it determines how and to what extent meaningful learning has unfolded. It's where you (as the teacher) do the bulk of the teaching--via leading group discussions about practical application and relevance in your students' lives.

I realize this is a wall of text, and it will likely take some review and consideration to make sense of it all. Feel free to read through the attached papers I've published on the subject for further guidance, or contact me directly with any questions you might have.

Article Learning Through Operation LAPIS: A Game-Based Approach to t...

Article Think Games on the Fly, Not Gamify: Issues in Game-Based Lea...

Thesis Project TECHNOLOGIA: A Game-Based Approach to Understanding ...

I would engage them in Puzzle Escape Rooms. It is really fun and educative experience

Dear Mário, I thought  I would share this article about the imaginative use of Minecraft that appeared in The Guardian.

http://www.theguardian.com/global/2015/apr/07/three-ways-minecraft-classroom

Dear Mario de Souza Almeida

Check here if meets: (http://www.abradi.org/?p=1183)

Gamification: The 4 Best Practices for Mobile Learning Platforms. Let's take a look at the facts about gamification. More than 70% of the world's largest companies must establish at least one gamificado application until the end of 2014, according to research firm Gartner. In addition, the global market for gamification tools, services and applications are designed to be 5500 million dollars in 2018, according M2 Research.

hugs,

  Welinton Baxto

Dear Mário, the embedded post provides information about how children are encouraged to contribute to the design of national parks by using Minecraft.

http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-32433127

If they are language learners, I would recommend Duolingo. It is easy to use and has a lot of repeat, which is good to remind words.

I believe that it is good templates for courses. Everyone likes using fancy software and online portals, but without the gamified course structure and gamified organisation of work, the platform/software will not solve anything.

Please refer to my courses for templates and to articles for explanations:

https://www.researchgate.net/project/Gamified-Classroom