Student experience of gamified learning: a qualitative approach

Student engagement and student outcomes in Higher Education continue to be the subject of academic concern, and thus receive research attention. To address these concerns, we aim to explore the use of gamification to enhance student engagement, and thereby improving student learning and performance. Gamification represents the use of game elements to enhance engagement in activities such as learning.  This paper highlights the use of game elements such as: leader boards, scores for activities, and multiplayer (group) activities.  The paper does this by exploring students’ learning journeys, as well as their experience of modules in which gamification had been introduced. Group-based competitive activities were introduced to modules undertaken by business students, student nurses, and paramedic students.  Students undertaking these modules were invited to participate in semi-structured interviews.  Twelve students drawn from the three disciplines took part in these semi-structured interviews, which were digitally recorded to enable production of accurate transcripts. Thematic analysis was used to identify key themes from the interviews. To explain student responses and their learning experience, four themes were developed; challenge, difference, group processes, and competition. Students often presented themselves as enjoying challenge, although this was sometimes contrasted with enjoyment of ‘easy’ activities.  Challenge was presented not only as a motivational factor, but also sometimes as a barrier to success.  This sense of challenge was often conceptually linked to students’ perception of difference within their gamified learning, which was pedagogically distinct from their typical learning experience.  Most, but not all, expressed positive views of this difference.  As with the theme of challenge, discussion of difference could be both positive and negative.  Participants highlighted competition as a positive factor.  The competition between groups influenced some group processes.  Some students noted previous challenges involved in group-work, such as unequal work distribution.  Participants observed the potential for intra-group friction, while identifying the positive learning outcomes of group work.  Taken together, the analysis suggests that competitive group work is a beneficial strategy for enhancing student engagement and performance

Exploring indicators of engagement: applications for gamification of online training systems

In recent years, gamification is being used in business organization for an increased employee engagement in the work place. However, less has been said about engagement of employees in online training to learn new skills and knowledge that may help or improve status quo in the organization. This paper explores the engagement indicators and game elements that may foster employee engagement in online training. The study employs an iterative step-by-step methodology that is used in information technology for the development of artefacts. As a result, a framework to implement the gamification technique in online training is proposed. The framework consists of a gamification construct that contains a set of commonly used game elements such as points, levels, challenges, rewards, competition, progress bar, leaderboard, badges, and feedback. The framework also contains three engagement dimensions including behavioural, emotional, and cognitive dimensions. To achieve the main objective of the study, an iterative process used by information technology researchers to develop new artefacts and their constructs is employed. As for the formulation of the hypothesis, for the evaluation of gamification’s influence on employee engagement when attending an online training, Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) is employed

The Effect of Gamification on Math Achievement, Motivation, and Learning Strategies in Flipped Classrooms

The aim of this research is to examine the effect of the gamification elements usage in the flipped classroom model on students’ academic success, motivation, and learning strategies in the 9th grade mathematics course clusters subject. The method of the study is a semi-experimental research design with a pretest/post-test control group. The sample of the study comprises 38 vocational high school students who attend 9th grade. The experimental process was conducted for five weeks in the mathematics lesson on “Clusters.” Motivated Strategies for Learning Questionnaire (MSLQ) and achievement tests were used as data collection tools. According to the results of the research, while gamification did not make a significant difference in academic achievement and motivation, it caused a significant difference in the elaboration and peer learning dimensions of the learning strategies scale. Although this is not reflected in academic success in the research, it is considered to contribute positively to student performance. In addition, taking the group as the basis instead of the individual in the design of gamification is thought to prevent negativities, such as anxiety and jealousy, that may develop because of gamification, as well as contribute positively to student performance

Assessing Foreign Language Learning Through Mobile Game-Based Learning Environments

With increasing globalization, foreign language skills have become one of the main requirements when applying for a job in leading ICT companies. Due to their ubiquity and multi-functionality, mobile devices allow teachers to provide technology-friendly students with highly dynamic learning contents in line with their lifestyle. Unfortunately, most of the available APPs still support a mainly one-way interaction (teacher to learner or computer-client interaction). The authors have designed an APP based on a highly interactive, ubiquitous and constructive learning approach. The current paper illustrates firstly how the APP has helped learners to get actively involved in their own learning process sharing and assessing their foreign language knowledge. And secondly, how students’ logs can be used to automate the assessment of different skills such as the ability to explain terms in a foreign language or to assess definitions created by other game players

Gamification: a key determinant of massive open online course (MOOC) success

Massive open online courses (MOOCs), contribute significantly to individual empowerment because they can help people learn about a wide range of topics. To realize the full potential of MOOCs, we need to understand their factors of success, here defined as the use, user satisfaction, along the individual and organizational performance resulting from the user involvement. We propose a theoretical framework to identify the determinants of successful MOOCs, and empirically measure these factors in a real MOOC context. We put forward the role of gamification and suggest that, together with information system (IS) theory, gamification proved to play a crucial role in the success of MOOCs.info:eu-repo/semantics/acceptedVersio

Defining requirements for a gamified programming exercises format

Computer programming is a complex domain both to teach and learn. This incited endeavors to find methods that could mitigateat least some of the existing barriers. In the last years, automatic assessment has been playing an important role in reducing theburden of teachers in the assessment of students’ attempts to solve programming exercises and fostering the autonomy of studentsby allowing them to practice in any place and at any time with timely feedback.Even more recent development is the use of gamification in computer programming education in order to raise the enjoyment andengagement of students. Despite its rising spread, until now, there is not a programming exercise specification format addressingthe needs of gamification, such as the definition of challenges, the underlying storyline, including the links to other exercises, orthe rewards for solving challenges in form of points, badges or virtual items. Such a data format would allow the exchange ofready-to-use programming exercises along with the gamification-related data among different educational institutions and courses,providing instructors a possibility to make use of gamification in their courses without having to invest their own time in defininggamification rules themselves.In this paper, we analyze a set of concepts related to programming gamification developed in our previous work to identify therequirements for the specification of a gamified exercise format.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

UniCraft: Exploring the impact of asynchronous multiplayer game elements in gamification

This paper describes the development and evaluation of UniCraft: a gamified mobile app designed to increase the engagement of undergraduate students with the content and delivery of their course. Gamification projects rely on extrinsic motivators to encourage participants to engage, such as compulsory participation or real-world rewards. UniCraft incorporates an asynchronous multiplayer battle game that uses constructive competition to motivate students, without using motivational levers that may reduce intrinsic motivation. The novel battle game employed by UniCraft employs Player vs Environment (Shafer, 2012) and Player Matching (Jennings, 2014) to ensure students work together in similarly ranked small groups as a team against a shared enemy. A study was undertaken which examined students' long-term engagement with UniCraft within the context of a 12-week long undergraduate programming course. The app was initially provided with the battle feature disabled, so that the effect on motivation and engagement could be studied when it was introduced during the intervention. Detailed interaction data recorded by the app was augmented by semi-structured interviews in order to provide a richer perspective on its effect at an individual and group level. The interaction data revealed convincing evidence for the increased motivational power of the battle feature, and this was supported by the interview data. Although no direct negative effects of competition were observed, interviews revealed that cheating was prevalent and this could in turn have unintended negative side-effects on motivation. Full results are presented and case studies are described for three of the participants, giving an insight into the different styles of interaction and motivation experienced by students in this study

Gaming in Action

The «Gaming in Action» project, which brought the publicaion of this book, involved institutions from different countries that deal with adult education. For almost three years, the partners worked with teachers and trainers who applied innovative pedagogical scenarios of game-based learning and gamification, all oriented from a rigorous pedagogical perspective. The project's main goal was to increase the acquisition of pedagogical innovation skills in these models and incorporate them into their pedagogical practices. The project searched to highlight the need for quality pedagogical training in a new, technologically digital, era: in this, education has less to do with reproducing information passively and has more to do with the development of creativity, critical thinking, problem- solving and decision-making.Erasmus Plus "Gaming in Action – engaging adult learners with games and gamification" Project number: 2018-1-TR01-KA204-05931

Gamification through leaderboards : an empirical study in engineering education

Universities are looking for solutions to engage more students in STEM domains and enhance their learning performance (LP). In this context, gamification is put forward as a solution to achieve this aim. The present study examined the effect of gamification – building on leaderboards ‐ on LP. Furthermore, mediating variables, such as intrinsic motivation, self‐efficacy, engagement, and background variables, such as sex, previous gaming experience, and undergraduate major, were considered. A pretest‐posttest quasi‐experimental design with an experimental and a control condition was set up (n = 89) in an Introductory Computer Programming course. We observed a significant improvement in the LP of students in the gamified condition. However, no interaction effect was detected, due to mediating and background variables. The high learning gain is a favorable indicator that gamification might be a promising approach to promote STEM programs