Rob Alvarez Bucholska
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From Tank to Healer: Gamifying Academic Teams | Episode 432

 

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What if your research team worked like a raid party? Raul Mora shares how bringing gamer language and MMORPG structures into academia boosted clarity, motivation, and long-term commitment. This conversation explores community design, role-based engagement, and why listening to gamers is the most underrated retention strategy in education.

Raúl is a professor at Universidad Pontificia Bolivariana in Medellín, Colombia, now also teaching remotely from Trondheim, Norway. He’s been in education for over 30 years, including time as a school and English teacher and as a college professor. His research explores second language literacy practices in the city, digital spaces, and schools.

Rob Alvarez is Head of Engagement Strategy, Europe at The Octalysis Group (TOG), a leading gamification and behavioral design consultancy. A globally recognized gamification strategist and TEDx speaker, he founded and hosts Professor Game, the #1 gamification podcast, and has interviewed hundreds of global experts. He designs evidence-based engagement systems that drive motivation, loyalty, and results, and teaches LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® and gamification at top institutions including IE Business School, EFMD, and EBS University across Europe, the Americas, and Asia.

 

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Looking forward to reading or hearing from you,

Rob

 

Full episode transcription (AI Generated)

Raul Mora (00:00)
I never said lead author, second author, third author. Instead of lead author, I say the tank. The moment I say tank, everybody knows what I’m talking about. I said the second author, you’re the healer. Everybody knew what I was talking about.

Rob (00:13)
Welcome to Professor Game, the number one podcast in gamification where we explore how games, gamification, and game thinking

help us boost engagement, multiply retention and build stronger products. I’m Rob, I’m Robert Alvarez, I’m the founder and coach of Professor Game. I’m also the head of engagement strategy at The Obtalis’s Group, which is the leading gamification consultancy. I’m also a professor of gamification and game-based solutions at global institutions such as IE Business School, EFMD, EBS University and others around the world. And before we dive into today’s super interesting conversation with Raoul, you’re struggling with retention.

you’re struggling with churn, with engagement in your product or service, I want to turn that around. We got you covered. Let’s have a chat right away. Just go ahead and find the link in the description. So, Engagers, welcome back to another episode of the Professor Game Podcast. And we have Raul with us today. So, Raul, we need to know, are you prepared to engage?

Raul Mora (01:14)
Game on. Let’s do this.

Rob (01:16)
Yes, let’s go because we have Raul who is, Raul Mora who is a professor at Universidad Pontificia Bolivariana in Medellin, Colombia. And now also from Trondheim, Norway. He’s been in education for over 30 years, including time as a school and English teacher and as a college professor. And his research explores second language literacy practices in the city, digital spaces and schools. Raul, is there anything that we’re missing that we should know before we go in? ⁓

Raul Mora (01:46)
I think that’s a pretty good start of my educational career that I’m a college professor living in Norway. Also very proud. I have two dogs that are kind of the center of a lot of the things I do and I keep them always. They always make my life a lot better and made my, my, my spouse’s life a lot better. I always like to give Conor and Duncan a little shout out because they’re awesome.

Rob (02:10)
It sounds very, very good. Raul, if we were to follow you around for a day, other than your spouse and your dogs, or in your dogs, yeah. What will we see? Like what does a typical day or a week look like for you?

Raul Mora (02:24)
⁓ that is a very, very simple ⁓ life because I usually get up early to take my dogs to daycare. Really early. That’s kind of the agreement we have since my partner works on campus and I teach remotely. I got the mornings off for me. So take the dogs then hit the gym because I think at this point in my life, now that I’m in my 50s, I really need to take extra care of my body.

So I always spend a small amount of time at the gym, then do a little bit of work before I pick up the dogs. And then I spend the rest of my afternoon focused on university stuff. So I spent a lot of time ⁓ sitting here in what I like to call my mobile command center. Cause here’s where I coordinate the stuff in my classes at university and everything I do with my research lab ⁓ via Discord. And then.

Somewhere between there is always time for food, time for movies, time for walks. But like these days, it’s a, I would say it’s a very simple life, but not because it’s simple. doesn’t mean it’s not meaningful or it’s not interesting. Just a simple life.

Rob (03:38)
Love it. Love it. So let’s dive into sort of content deep questions now, because we know you’ve been working at a year section of games and education for a while and you’ve been doing stuff in this space. So we would like to know the time when things did not go well in this intersection of games, education and whatnot. Can you, can you guide us, walk us through that experience?

Raul Mora (04:02)
Yeah, I would say probably one of the biggest challenges as we were developing that research came through the pandemic The pandemic really brought really I think it threw a monkey wrench on everybody else’s life But if you are someone who does research ⁓ It really threw everything upside down in terms of communication in terms of doing the field work

At the time when the pandemic hit us, we were in the process of working on the book proposal, just kind of working on initial details to submit to the publisher. And that, of course, that required a lot of recalibration in our life. And I’m going to say that’s where my gaming team, where Team at AV, which one of the teams in literature in the Literacy and Second Language Project Lab, came in incredibly handy. They were the ones who suggested that we should move to Discord.

They were the ones who brought up, Raul is through Discord. Discord is a platform for gamers and it has bandwidth. We can create a server, we can create channels. It gives us what we need to continue working remotely. Without the gamers, I don’t know what I would have done. Probably would have done what a lot of people did, which was kind of hybridize a little bit of a WhatsApp channel with Zoom and maybe Teams, ⁓ Google Meet. I mean, it would have been, it wouldn’t have been the experience that it was.

And that was possible, overcoming the technical challenges and the digital challenges of the pandemic, which then was coupled with my move, my relocation to Norway. Without that gamer perspective and what my team of gamers brought to the table in terms of helping me, I want to say they were gamify everything we did.

it would have been more difficult, and even in the sense of working on the book.

The gaming mindset was the key to how we put the entire project together.

Rob (06:07)
And so do you mean? What do you mean by that? Because you’re talking about Discord. I am on Discord as well. I’m sure some of the audiences as well. What were the things that, like what were the challenges that Discord was saving, helping with, ⁓ and as well that gaming mindset that you’re referring to?

Raul Mora (06:23)
⁓ so would say first of all, in Discord, it was the fact that as Discord is a sale, it’s a more self-contained platform in terms of communication in the sense that you can have conference calls, that you can have back channels for text communication and have, for example, different teams, ⁓ split within the server, but then how communal spaces where every part, every member of the lab can

communicate and talk to each other. And then the fact that I, if I need to be with my team, I don’t have to, I don’t have to start, yeah, here’s a zoom link. Like, it’s kind of like we always do. Here’s a zoom link. Here’s a Teams link. I simply say, look, I need everybody on this particular, on this video channel in half an hour and everybody comes there. So having that, and then having everybody in one space where we can continue building the community because

Let’s be honest, some of these other platforms, ⁓ they’re not very community friendly. I would say like, yeah, I don’t think you can build a community on Zoom. And you can build a group on WhatsApp, but building a community in the sense you could on Discord, it’s not going to happen on WhatsApp. Teams is not the place for that either. So as I have a lab.

that’s also a community of learners, a community of teachers, that place afforded us the possibility to continue communication, to continue building the projects, to continue building what we did. And when I think about the gamer mentality, the gaming mindset, ⁓ specifically in the case of the gaming research that we do.

It was the idea that if we are doing research on gaming, we cannot think of doing research in the traditional metrics that we would do research otherwise. It means no, let’s get into this gaming mindset and start asking questions like the questions I started asking my team.

How do gaming teams operate? So I have in my team and I have my team, some semi-professional and professional gamers. I want to get into that mindset to help to introduce them and mentor them better into what it means to do research in digital spaces. I want to start with what they know. Tell me how teams operate, walk me through the process. And then I can start creating parallels between what gaming teams do.

and what research teams do. And from that parallel, they know what we’re talking about. it’s, as we start gamifying everything, we start thinking of the language. So when we were writing the chapters, and this is an example, I never said lead author, second author, third author. If I started with that, my teams are going to be like, we have no idea what you’re talking about. But I started using, ⁓

gaming terminology that you would find in MMORPGs or MOBAs. I said, instead of lead author, which I say the tank, the moment I say tank, everybody knows what I’m talking about. said, the second author, you’re the healer. Everybody knew what I was talking about. And they knew the functions they have to perform in the process of writing. So tank, healer, DPS. And that gave them a better outlook on what they were supposed to do in the process.

If I start with the traditional language of, ⁓ this is what the good author does. This is what the second author, it should not take me twice as long. And they might still have questions, but when I go with the gaming, then go with the gaming mindset into the richer such endeavor. They knew exactly what to do. That saved me time, especially in a project where we had a lot of turnaround over the past three or four years, because some people came into the project and people left, but the people who left because we already had the language.

and this culture integrated into the project, easing into the project was easier because, oh, they might not know a lot about research. They might not know a lot about writing, but they know a lot about gaming. We start from there and we build the rest.

Rob (10:55)
Sounds amazing. amazing. And Raul, how about you guide us through some of the victories as well, because that was one of the challenges that you faced, right? The pandemic hit, you know, we don’t know what to do with this. What about some of the victories? Can you guide us?

Raul Mora (11:10)
⁓

that’s a beautiful question. think probably the biggest victory so far, and I’m going to return to the book because seeing this book, ⁓ see the light of day, that embodied even how we define victory. So when at work, we define victory, not simply as winning, but as staying committed and engaged. So it says victory, there’s an element is

Yeah, the actual winning that happens in the games, but also how even when you don’t win, you still remain committed. How you still continue coming back to those games and seeing this project coming ⁓ to fruition for everybody was the ultimate victory. Because you could see that there was this quest, there were a series of quests, there was this journey, there was the whole story mode that was

building the proposal, going through the review, working on the chapters, putting all the final touches until we have now everybody is getting their print their free copies in the mail. And I see them on social media, unboxing this book and holding it in their hands and saying, it finally happened. After all these years, one of my students posted on social media after all these years, and I’m like, yes.

after all these years. that for us was the sense of victory in the sense of

We had doubts in the process. had questions whether we, I mean, there were moments we were wondering, are we ever going to finish this? But we always went back to the gamer ethos. We always returned to that ethos and we continued, persevered. And that brought us to this victory. So the idea, the notion, the fact that we know people are recognizing the existence of this book, that people are already talking about this book.

⁓ especially a book that comes from Latin America that comes from a group of writers who are writing in English or the second language. So it means throw an extra hurdle into the process. That is not simply writing an academic book, but in a language you’re still learning that all of us to a higher or less degree are still learning or still navigating or still trying to master. That brings a sense of victory. And.

That I think is what’s propelling us to think about, yeah, where can we go with this? Where can we go further with how we understand gamification? Why don’t we go further into exploring other areas of video games we haven’t explored as of yet?

Rob (14:01)
Amazing. know, with all the work you’ve done, I’m guessing that you’ve come up with some sort of process that you’ve observed, that you’ve tested. If you were to use games for any of your projects, your future projects or past projects, how do you do it? What happens? You know, what happens, how does it start? What are the steps? there are any, how does it work essentially?

Raul Mora (14:22)
How it usually starts is, and that’s why it’s important to bring the gamers as designers of the entire enterprise. Because they are the ones who give me the perspective of what games are worth exploring. If I come to this from that language perspective, that linguistic perspective, it’s possible that I’m going to go…

into the usual games or I, since I don’t have the extended background, I’m going to start just going to the, to the usual games. So League of Legends or Worldcraft, Minecraft and stay there. I may overlook other names. I may, I may overlook the history of the games. So I think one of the things I like to analyze is the evolution of games and how that evolution of games also reflects.

⁓ the way people engage with them and communicate and use language in those games. So if I really want to understand how we play with language in games today, I first need to go back and see what happened in the 80s with Atari. I mean, if I start in 2026 with the latest iteration of Red Dead Redemption or the latest iteration of Geocraft of Auto or the latest version of Call of Duty, yeah, it’s okay.

I also need to look at what happened in the 80s when people were exploring the classics. Space Invaders, Missile Commander, ⁓ Superman, ET, which one of my favorite games and I’m not embarrassed to say that one of my favorite Atari games is ET. I it has a bad rep, but it’s still one I hold near and dear to my heart. ⁓

Rob (16:14)
statement

Raul Mora (16:15)
Oh yeah, yeah. I’m just saying it because I have a, I have a special place in my heart. I know the game is not top notch, it’s not Pelé soccer by any means, but still holding my heart. Or you can go all the way back to Pong and Pong and Activision. So this is historical. And I like to, there are a of games that I like to always, I’ve been following historically for over 30 some years, Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat. And I like to really.

analyze the evolution of those games because as I look at the evolution of the games, I can also see what needs to be done. ⁓ Let’s say for example, in terms of education, which is my primary area, or in terms of language instruction, or in terms of helping teachers think differently about what it means to gamify a classroom. Like think about what perspectives are missing when I’m talking about gamification. What am I putting too much focus on and what am I overlooking?

which is one of the central points of our extended research, this idea of how we are thinking gamification and who is left out of the current conversations.

Rob (17:26)
Amazing, amazing. If somebody were to, you work, you know, you were maybe to advise somebody on a project and gain education, but just very briefly, right? You could only tell them a thing. What would that best practice or that thing, small thing be? Something that makes a project at least a little bit better.

Raul Mora (17:43)
Listen to the gamers. Sometimes a lot of people talk about gamification by looking at the games and then looking at the games and looking at some of what people say we should be looking at the games. When we started doing gamification, the first thing I said was, I want to listen to the gamers. And when I say listen to the gamers is ask them what they do when they play.

So don’t worry so much about the game itself. Go and talk to them and find out those gamers who are already in your schools, in your classrooms, in your offices, in your laboratories and pick them brain.

pick their brain and find out what is it that gamers do when they play. And once you start realizing what they do, that is going to give you some very valuable clues about how to rethink the way you gamify things. Because then that input gets them more involved and they can become, let’s say, the focal point of that gamification mindset.

Rob (19:00)
Sounds amazing. Sounds amazing. Thanks for those recommendations for sure. And keeping up with the recommendations, is there a book that you would recommend the Engagers and which one would it be and why?

Raul Mora (19:10)
Well, ⁓ if you can indulge me, of course I to go with that.

Rob (19:15)
next

to your- to sit right next to your book in the-

Raul Mora (19:17)
Of

course I would say, well, first of all, looking at understanding second language, use it as gamers, language as victory. And I say that one, not just because it’s the book I edited with my team, but because it’s one of the very few books where you’re going to have gamers telling you the whole story. So it’s not simply the traditional route of I go and observe gamers or I look at the game and I start theorizing, no, these are gamers theorizing the gaming.

These are gamers telling you the stories from the experience they had as gamers and how that helped them choose the games we analyzed. And they helped them think about how they’re bringing this to their classrooms and the new questions we can ask. So I would say that’s one ⁓ book that I have found that I would use. ⁓ In our inquiries, ⁓ one of the first books we read was ⁓ How We the Guilts Can Teach Us by Jim G. is one of those ⁓

foundational ⁓ books. ⁓ I would say depending on what area, ⁓ there are some of the classics, know, like McGonigal’s book on gamification. ⁓ If you’re looking want to go even deeper into the language learning side, there’s one book on foreign language ⁓ learning gaming by John Reinhart, ⁓ Professor at University of Arizona that can be

quite helpful in that regard. Those are some of the key books I have around and some of the key authors I’ve consulted with over the years as I was developing the project.

Rob (20:57)
Sounds amazing. And you’ve recommended a few. You started with James Paul G. I think you mentioned the one of what video games have to teach us, That’s the one. You talk about that book. Is there somebody that you would like to hear answering the same questions as you’re answering today? Future guests for the Professor Game Podcast, essentially.

Raul Mora (21:16)
That’s a really good question. ⁓ Well, let me just give me one second to think about it. I can think of a couple of colleagues ⁓ who have done some really interesting work in the area of video games. One ⁓ I would like to recommend is Antero Garcia. He’s a professor at Stanford University who’s done a lot of work with gaming, but also analog games. ⁓ There is also a group of friends. ⁓

is the Critical Games ⁓ Study Group. They have a group of colleagues from Rhode Island and Baylor University who are looking at really interesting ways to problematize ⁓ gaming and give it a critical touch on how to rethink how we bring video games into the classroom in education.

Rob (22:06)
sound like amazing recommendations for sure. And in this space of, you’ve been talking about, gamification and gamers, and especially understanding their, their logic, right? What would you say is your superpower? What’s that thing that you do at least better than most other people?

Raul Mora (22:24)
I would say the ability to mentor these young scholars. ⁓ It’s really, I mean, putting together a project like this when you have very talented gamers who still are still learning the ropes of the academic process requires you to have an overly heightened sense of what it means to mentor people. And in the sense that

It means how to challenge them without breaking them, but also how to offer them support when it’s needed. It’s learning how to time yourself, learning to know when you have to take over versus when you have to step back and trust the process. So I think for me that would be, yeah, that’s what made it possible that I, I mentor them in the process and less as I’m the professor and they’re the students and more like.

I’m someone who has more experience in certain arenas and I bring that expertise to the game. But at the same time, I, in this process of mentoring, you also have to let yourself be taught. You have to let yourself be mentored because that’s, that’s also important. Sometimes people ⁓ who are in this position of supervising or mentoring, if you come to the mindset of this perception that you have all the answers.

and you got nothing left to learn and your students have nothing left to teach you, that’s going to be your kryptonite right there. Not letting the student knowledge permeate you, that’s kryptonite in a process like this. That is your, that will be your kryptonite. That will be your color yellow to your green lantern. That’s, that’s going to be fatal to the whole process.

Rob (24:09)
Amazing, amazing. And now we get to the difficult question, Raoul. It’s time for the tough, the tough part, Dark Souls level kind of thing. What is your favorite game?

Raul Mora (24:20)
Oh, that goes without saying, it’s Mortal Kombat. I’ve been a huge fan of Mortal Kombat since I saw the first, the OG Mortal Kombat in an arcade in 1992. These days I play a lot of Mortal Kombat 11. I’m not the most proficient, but I like to play for fun. I still haven’t moved to Mortal Kombat 1. So I love, I like Mortal Kombat 11. I have been bringing a lot of these Mortal Kombat lore.

into my work. That’s one of the reasons in my team they call me the commander with a K. That K is the Mortal Kombat nod. So that’s probably my favorite game. And always have fun memories of all the Atari games I used to play when I was a child.

Rob (25:04)
Sounds amazing for sure. So Raul, is there any final piece of advice, anything else you’d like to say, anything you’d like to mention before we take off? And of course, let us know where we can find more about your book, about your work, whatever it is that you want to go for.

Raul Mora (25:21)
Well, I would say first of all, people who are involved in doing this kind of work on gamification in education or otherwise, ⁓ it’s a line of inquiry that’s absolutely worth it. ⁓ Gamers, and we talked about this in our book often, gamers have moved away from the traditional stereotype of the little kid who’s hiding in the basement. ⁓

It’s crossed all kinds of boundaries. have gamers who are five, you have gamers who are 50, and you have gamers who are 90. And they’re all involved and they come in different walks of life. If you have the possibility to find them in your spaces, work with them, learn from them. So you can understand this gaming world better. You can understand, you can move away from the traditional stereo, from the stereotypes or the misconceptions about gaming.

gaming games gamers, give yourself the chance to learn about it. Even if you’re not gonna play the game, there are things that gamers do in their everyday life that if you translate them to your work environment, you translate them to your research labs, you can turn them into your classrooms, they’re gonna create new experiences, they’re gonna create new environments. And when it comes to following our work,

Of course I have to give a nice shout out to my research lab, the Letters in Synchrotronics Project. ⁓ You can follow our works. You can follow our work on our website, lslp.org. You can also follow us on Instagram and TikTok with our handle, nslplegion, one word, lslplegion. That’s the same handle for both ⁓ outlets. And you can learn more about both. You can learn more about our research. You can find ways to network with us.

We’re always looking for collaborators far and wide.

Rob (27:25)
Sounds amazing. Thank you very much, Raoul, for investing this time with us today, for taking a few minutes off your schedule to interact with us and to spread your knowledge in this audience of the Engagers. However, Raoul and Engagers, as you know, at least for now and for today.

It is time to say that it’s game over. Hey, Engagers, and thank you for listening to the Professor Game podcast. And since you’re interested in this world of creating motivation, engagement, loyalty, using game-inspired solutions, how about you join us on our free online community at Professor Game on School? You can find the link right below in the description. But the main thing is to click there. Join us. It’s a platform called School. It’s for free, and you will find

plenty of resources there will be up to date with everything that we’re doing any opportunities that we might have for you and of course before you go into your next mission before you click continue please remember to subscribe using your favorite podcast app and listen to the next episode of Professor Game see you there

 

End of transcription