Creating Engaging Experiences in MOOCs through In-Course Redeemable Rewards

Gamification strategies have been proposed to mitigate student disengagement and dropouts in massive online environments, due to the positive results shown by these strategies at lower scales. Among various gamification strategies, redeemable rewards have been identified as an effective element to intrinsically motivate students and increase their engagement in educational settings, including MOOCs. Yet, effective design, implementation and enactment of this gamification strategy in MOOC contexts might face new challenges, given the unique characteristics of these learning settings such as massiveness. As an attempt to help teachers use redeemable rewards in MOOCs, this paper analyzes the characteristics of MOOCs that influence its integration and presents a proposal of a system supporting the design, implementation and enactment of such rewards. The envisioned system is illustrated by a scenario that describes the main features of this system for teachers and students.This research has been partially funded by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness, under project grants TIN2014-53199-C3-2-R and TIN2017-85179-C3-2-R, and the Regional Goverment of Castilla y Leo ́n together with the European Regional Development Fund, under project grant VA082U16. The authors thank the rest of the GSIC-EMIC research team for their valuable ideas and support

To reward and beyond: Analyzing the effect of reward-basedstrategies in a MOOC

Producción CientíficaDespite the benefits of MOOCs (e.g., open access to education offered by prestigious universities), the low level of student engagement remains as an important issue causing massive dropouts in such courses. The use of reward-based gamification strategies is one approach to promote student engagement and prevent dropout. However, there is a lack of solid empirical studies analyzing the effects of rewards in MOOC environments. This paper reports a between-subjects design study conducted in a MOOC to analyze the effects of badges and redeemable rewards on student retention and engagement. Results show that the implemented reward strategies had not significant effect on student retention and behavioral engagement measured through the number of pageviews, task submissions, and student activity time. However, it was found that learners able to earn badges and redeemable rewards participated more in gamified tasks than those learners in the control group. Additionally, results reveal that the participants in the redeemable reward condition requested and earned earlier the rewards than those participants in the badge condition. The potential implications of these findings in the instructional design of future gamified MOOCs are also discussed.Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades (projects TIN2017-85179-C3-2-R / TIN2014-53199-C3-2-R)Junta de Castilla y León (project VA257P18)European Commission (project 588438-EPP-1-2017-1-EL- EPPKA2-KA

Development of a Social Gamified Platform for e-Learning

The way in which nowadays education is evolving, makes it possible to associate it with MOOCs courses and gamification techniques to improve learning outcomes of students. To this end, this paper shows the development of an educational e-learning platform built upon the Elgg social framework, where a set of gamification elements were added: Points, achievements, leaderboards and rewards. For the future, effectiveness validations will be carried out with students as well as further developments with other types of gamification elements

An analysis of gamification elements in online learning to enhance learning engagement

Evolutions in technology have changed the day-to-day especially in education.The ways of teaching and learning have begun the same process.Only the methods can be varieties depends on the instructors.Nowadays, the interest-growing topic in education is about gamification.Various approach has been introduced through gamification to engage student learning but there is still criticism of gamification.Thus, this paper will present an analysis of the existing gamification elements applied in teaching and learning to enhance learning engagement.A survey of the literature was conducted to analyze the existing gamification elements applied in teaching and learning.A deep search of academic literature was undertaken includes books, journals, conference paper, articles, dissertations and theses. Suggestions on how to integrate gamification environment are also included in order to propose new model of engaging online student using gamification elements

An Analysis Of Gamification Elements In Online Learning To Enhance Learning Engagement

Evolutions in technology have changed the day-to-day especially in education. The ways of teaching and learning have begun the same process. Only the methods can be varieties depends on the instructors. Nowadays, the interest-growing topic in education is about gamification. Various approach has been introduced through gamification to engage student learning but there is still criticism of gamification. Thus, this paper will present an analysis of the existing gamification elements applied in teaching and learning to enhance learning engagement. A survey of the literature was conducted to analyze the existing gamification elements applied in teaching and learning. A deep search of academic literature was under-taken includes books, journals, conference paper, articles, dissertations and theses. Suggestions on how to integrate gamification environment are also included in order to propose new model of engaging online student using gamification elements

Understanding student behavior and perceptions toward earning badges in a gamified MOOC

Producción CientíficaDespite the advantages of MOOCs, such as the open and free access to education, these courses are criticized for students’ lack of motivation and their high dropout rates. Gamification is a technique used to increase student motivation and engagement in small-scale educational contexts. However, the effects of gamification on student engagement have been scarcely explored in MOOC environments, and the findings so far are inconsistent. To address this gap, this research work examines the students’ behavior toward earning badges and how it relates to their engagement in a gamified MOOC. According to the results, the behaviors toward badges of the active students were generally positive and significantly correlated with other variables measuring their engagement (e.g., pageviews, submitted tasks, forum posts), although this positive behavior seems to decrease throughout the course. Additionally, students that reported high motivation by badges at the end of the course showed a higher engagement level than those that were not appealed by badges.European Regional Development Fund, under project grants TIN2014-53199-C3-2-R and TIN2017-85179-C3-2-RJunta de Castilla y León (programa de apoyo a proyectos de investigación - Ref. Project VA082U16 and VA257P18)European Commission, under project grant 588438-EPP-1-2017-1-EL-EPPKA2-KA

Gamification of e-Learning: an investigation into the influence of gamification on student motivation.

Master of Commerce in Information Systems & Technology. University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, 2017.Traditional teacher-centred learning is being confronted by an increasing awareness of the value of student-centred learning. E-learning, despite its limitations, is often presented as a solution to learning challenges prevalent in teacher-centred learning since it affords students greater control of the learning process. Combined with this, academics are increasingly competing for students’ attention and struggle to motivate students. However, students, when confronted with the array of games and social media platforms available, willingly dedicate several hours glued to their screens socialising, engaging and gaming. Such willingness to engage these so-called distractions whilst displaying reluctance to engage their academic work may be attributed to a lack of motivation. This is even more prevalent in the domain of e-learning. Adopting an embedded mixed methods case study design, this study explored the influence of gamification of e-learning on motivation. Herein, expectations and factors influencing experiences of gamification of e-learning were explored. Furthermore, through Self-Determination Theory (SDT) & Intrinsic Motivation Inventory (IMI) as theoretical lenses, this study explored how gamification of e-learning influences motivation. Gamification is conceptualised as an objective-driven user-centred technique which integrates game mechanics, dynamics and game aesthetics into real-world contexts to motivate behaviour. Gartner envisages that by 2020, gamification will be deeply integrated into the prevalent higher education structures. Whilst many applications of gamification aim towards enhancing classroom-based learning, the exploration of gamification of e-learning in higher education, particularly in a developing country, remains an emerging domain of research. This research found that participants experienced gamification and various game elements differently, based on their BrainHex gamer profiles. In terms of SDT, whilst progression through the gamified course was guided and consistent, with all participants progressing as a single group, they experienced a sense of autonomy. Participants also experienced a greater sense of competence and relatedness in engaging with the gamified course. In the context of IMI, participants’ experiences suggest that gamification was valuable, increased curiosity and was effective for learning. However, they reported experiencing tension and a high degree of effort required by the gamified course. Students expected transparency in terms of scoring and raised queries where required. They generally preferred visual cues whilst engaging with the gamified course, expected almost real-time feedback in terms of scoring and resolution of queries, but had varying views on which game elements motivated them. Essentially, it was found that gamification positively influenced participants’ motivation. However, it must be noted that whilst gamification motivated students, some experienced demotivation. Contributing factors include not understanding the game from the outset, being demotivated by not earning frequent rewards and losing progress in the game due to external factors

Social gamification in education: a gamified platform based on the Elgg framework

Education, MOOCs and gamification are growing together over the recent years to help students to get better academic results. A literature review was performed to detect the main gamification elements used in current educational field. Therefore, we have modified the well-known Elgg social platform to add some gamification elements to the system. These elements were points, achievements, leaderboards and rewards. For the future, we are planning experiments with students to verify the effectiveness of these elements for engaging students

A systematic review for identifying instructional design strategies and principles in extended massive open online courses (xMOOCs)

Extended massive open online courses (xMOOCs), which follow traditional university learning models, have become a popular platform for structured learning over the past few years. Despite this popularity, xMOOCs are generally poorly designed, which has caused dramatic drop-out rates; therefore, they require extensive revision using instructional design strategies and principles. Hence, the purpose of this study is to conduct a systematic review of empirical studies that present best practices in the instructional design of xMOOCs and inductively identify effective instructional principles with the aim of improving the effectiveness of xMOOC instruction. We used the Population, Intervention, Comparison, Outcome, and Study Design (PICOS) framework as a guide to design our research question, we followed the PRISMA framework to conduct a robust systematic review through Covidence, and we finalized 16 related articles to be included in this study. There are four main findings: 1) this study explores effective xMOOC instruction-related research design methods and approaches and will provide future researchers deep insight into conducting empirical research on xMOOC instructional design; 2) this study provides insight into xMOOC participants and intervention characteristics for future researchers and instructors to understand the most common course design patterns and participant features; 3) this study identifies xMOOC typical instructional design strategies to promote the understanding of the best practices for designing high-quality xMOOCs; and 4) instructional design principles are inductively extracted from instructional best practices to provide researchers, policymakers, instructors and xMOOC platform providers with deep insights for promoting effective teaching and learning as well as for offering recommendations for future designers to avoid design drawbacks and promote design strengths