Company-university collaboration in applying gamification to learning about insurance

Incorporating gamification into training–learning at universities is hampered by a shortage of quality, adapted educational video games. Large companies are leading in the creation of educational video games for their internal training or to enhance their public image and universities can benefit from collaborating. The aim of this research is to evaluate, both objectively and subjectively, the potential of the simulation game BugaMAP (developed by the MAPFRE Foundation) for university teaching about insurance. To this end, we have assessed both the game itself and the experience of using the game as perceived by 142 economics students from various degree plans and courses at the University of Seville during the 2017–2018 academic year. As a methodology, a checklist of gamification components is used for the objective evaluation, and an opinion questionnaire on the game experience is used for the subjective evaluation. Among the results several findings stand out. One is the high satisfaction of the students with the knowledge acquired using fun and social interaction. Another is that the role of the university professors and the company monitors turns out to be very active and necessary during the game-learning sessions. Finally, in addition to the benefits to the university of occasionally available quality games to accelerate student skills training, the company–university collaboration serves as a trial and refinement of innovative tools for game-based learning

Gamification in IT Service Management: A Systematic Mapping Study

Despite the benefits of adopting IT Service Management (ITSM) reference models, such initiatives do not always produce the expected results. The research literature in this area concludes that motivation, engagement, skills, experience, performance and willingness to change of the personnel involved are among the critical factors for an effective ITSM implementation. Gamification has the capability to improve people's motivation and engagement and to drive people's behavior to meet the objectives set. Besides, gamification is widely used in learning systems for increasing students' skills and competences. In the last years, many researchers have added gamification to their process improvement initiatives to increase the motivation and engagement of process participants and to address their behavior throughout the process. Thus, we consider that adopting gamification in ITSM processes can be an interesting area of study. In this paper, we conducted a systematic mapping study to analyze the actual state of research in the field of ITSM gamification and identify the key challenges that justify future research. The results of our study highlight the positive impact of adopting gamification in ITSM processes and that ITSM gamification is a novel an attractive research area with many action possibilities

Simulation Game Concept For AI-Enhanced Teaching Of Advanced Value Stream Analysis and Design

Value stream analysis and design is employed globally by improvement teams within industrial settings to maximize value creation and eliminate waste. For ending methodical time-centricity, research expanded the methodology to incorporate diverse facets like material flow cost accounting, information logistics, and external influence factors. These enhancements, along with increasing data volumes, are prompting a re-evaluation of how professional improvement teams should think and operate. Consequently, a transformation of the pedagogical approach used for educating students and professionals necessitates novel solutions. Conventional teaching methods such as expository lectures are widely considered inadequate in promoting knowledge retention and engagement. So far, existing research has not yet resulted in a solution that can effectively impart the methodological complexity of advanced value stream analysis and design in a motivating and vivid fashion. To address this gap, this paper applies a tailored CRISP gamification framework to develop a simulation game concept. These concept enables AI-enhanced teaching of advanced value stream analysis and design focusing on identification of multi-stage resource-efficient optimization strategies. Through integration of game-based learning with AI a trained reinforcement learning agent can act either competitively or cooperatively, creating a unique form of teaching accounting the aspects personalization, adaptive feedback, content creation, and analysis and assessment

An auction-based serious game for bug tracking

Today, one of the challenges in software engineering is utilizing application lifecycle management (ALM) tools effectively in software development. In particular, it is hard for software developers to engage with the work items that are appointed to themselves in these ALM tools. In this study, we have focused on bug tracking in ALM where one of the most important metrics is mean time to resolution that is the average time to fix a reported bug. To improve this metric, we developed a serious game application based on an auction-based reward mechanism. The ultimate aim of this approach is to create an incentive structure for software practitioners to find and resolved bugs that are auctioned where participants are encouraged to solve and test more bugs in less time and improve quality of software development in a competitive environment. We conduct hypothesis tests by performing a Monte Carlo simulation. The preliminary results of this research support the idea that using a gamification approach for an issue tracking system enhances the productivity and decreases mean time to resolution

Smart Grid for the Smart City

Modern cities are embracing cutting-edge technologies to improve the services they offer to the citizens from traffic control to the reduction of greenhouse gases and energy provisioning. In this chapter, we look at the energy sector advocating how Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) and signal processing techniques can be integrated into next generation power grids for an increased effectiveness in terms of: electrical stability, distribution, improved communication security, energy production, and utilization. In particular, we deliberate about the use of these techniques within new demand response paradigms, where communities of prosumers (e.g., households, generating part of their electricity consumption) contribute to the satisfaction of the energy demand through load balancing and peak shaving. Our discussion also covers the use of big data analytics for demand response and serious games as a tool to promote energy-efficient behaviors from end users

Games-Based Online Course Design: Prototype of Gamification for Online Tutors

With the ubiquity of interactive games in students’ lives and the rise of gamified experiences across the web and mobile applications, online tutors and practitioners of technology enhanced learning have been inspired to incorporate games-based elements. This paper introduces a prototype of an online application that helps online tutors to embed gaming to design their online course. We developed a framework for online course leaders which explains how Wikis (as an online learning platform) can support students’ learning, interaction, and sharing of knowledge in the online community. We are presenting a metaphor for the course design in a gameboard like “snakes and ladders”. This metaphoric game enables online tutors to elaborate online interaction among their students. The game methodological design approach for this metaphoric game merges different pedagogical theories such as (socio-constructivism) with practice in online learning (Wiki) and gives the online tutor an idea about what theory/approach is used when selecting any technological tool or moving forward in the game. This framework could help tutors, educational institutions and students to use a common language with students to describe their teaching and learning activities. Primarily, it helps tutors to make decisions about learning activities, facilitate, guide and support students’ communication and collaboration