Evaluation and Credentialing in Digital Music Communities

An examination of the use of digital badges as a reward for both casual online music evaluators and professional musicians.Professional and amateur musicians alike use social media as a platform for showcasing and promoting their music. Social media evaluation practices—rating, ranking, voting, “liking,” and “friending” by ordinary users, peers, and critics—have become essential promotional tools for musicians. In this report, H. Cecilia Suhr examines one recent development in online music evaluation: the use of digital badges to aid in assessment and evaluation. Digital badges have emerged in recent years as a potential credentialing method in informal learning environments. Suhr explores online music communities' use of digital badges as a reward for both casual music evaluators and musicians.Suhr examines the intersection of evaluation and gamification in Spotify's “Hit or Not” game, in which players assess a song's hit potential and receive digital badges as rewards, and considers the implications of turning music evaluation into a game. She then explores in detail the development of peer and professional critics on Indaba Music, a cloud-based collaboration platform where musicians earn badges through participating in contests. Suhr considers the emerging challenges and shortcomings of contest-based virtual communities and the value of badges, as perceived by Indaba musicians. She investigates to what extent digital badges can effectively represent and credit musicians' accomplishments and merits; describes the challenges, benefits, and shortcomings of digital badges as an evaluation mechanism; and compares the use of digital badges in assessing creativity to their use in learning and credentialing institutions

MeritPatch - Family Collaborative Activities

There is no doubt that the modern family is very busy and disrupted by outside influences. Social trends and expectations have caused many families to become disconnected. There is research that points to overuse of technology as one culprit. Other research suggests that lack of spiritualism has negatively affected families. Regardless of the cause, it can be argued that the more disconnect within a family, the more likely it is for family members to experience negative social, emotional and/or health related issues as well as broken relationships. This study seeks to define family interactions and activities that support a healthy family lifestyle for all members and to create a system by which a family can feel a sense of accomplishment and pride through shared interactions. The study will use design thinking methodology to research through advice interviews and iteratively design based on feedback

The potential role of ePortfolios in the Teaching Excellence Framework

Current debates on HE policy in the UK are dominated by the evolving Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF) which will soon involve the government establishing key metrics.  In this context, and seizing this valuable moment in policy formation, we here provide a brief foray into the multiple aspects of ‘teaching excellence’ (TE) as a basis to highlight both the complexity of identifying ways to measure it and the shortcomings of existing official developments.  In the absence of a clear conceptual understanding of the learning processes and the role of teaching which apparently underpins the TEF, we present a model of the learning process to which the indicators currently proposed by the authorities can be related.  We propose that ePortfolios can play a special role in the TEF in capturing the qualitative outcomes of learning processes which, importantly, reflect the student perspective in terms of goals, learning experiences and achievement.  These are both crucial yet missing elements of the proposals to date. Finally, we provide some examples of how information from ePortfolios could be used by HE institutions to enhance their institutional submissions to the TEF.

The Gamification Inventory : an Instrument for the Qualitative Evaluation of Gamification and its Application to Learning Management Systems

Gamification has risen meteorically in popularity since the beginning of the decade, both in practitioner circles and among researchers. We show that empirical results of gamificationa s effects do not match the hype around it as studies have largely failed to prove any effects. We posit that a proper evaluation of gamification requires an understanding of how gamification can be expressed in real-world applications and employ Wittgensteinian family resemblances as a basis for such a definition. We have collected a set of properties that gamified applications can have through the analysis of goals and means of gamification mentioned in the literature and through an expert survey. We then used those results to create the Gamification Inventory, an instrument for the qualitative assessment of gamification in a given system. We have tested the instrument with a set of evaluators in the field of learning management systems (LMSs), informing both a refinement of the instrument and the preparation of an experiment with the intent of testing the effectiveness of common forms of gamification. The analysis of these LMSs led to results very similar to what our analysis of previous empirical studies in gamification, and especially gamification in education, have shown: most gamification is concentrated on using points, badges, levels and leaderboards as game design elements. We argue that a large-scale, long-term experiment with a proper factorial design is needed to evaluate the effectiveness of gamification and have prepared such a study. Having identified points and badges as two major elements to be tested, we developed an extension to a competency grid add-on for the LMS Moodle that allows for a 2x2 factorial design of using points and badges. The system is designed for large-scale distribution among schools using the competency grid in Moodle, with minimal invasiveness in mind. We briefly discuss the challenges that come with such large-scale experiments, especially in German schools. As a result, we present a new, tested, and refined instrument for the qualitative assessment of gamification in a given system, an overview over gamification as it is being used in the most popular LMSs, and an experimental setup to test the effectiveness of points and badges in schools, using custom add-ons to the competency grid for Moodle and to the corresponding mobile application

Gamification for Health and Wellbeing : A Systematic Review of the Literature

Background: Compared to traditional persuasive technology and health games, gamification is posited to offer several advantages for motivating behaviour change for health and well-being, and increasingly used. Yet little is known about its effectiveness. Aims: We aimed to assess the amount and quality of empirical support for the advantages and effectiveness of gamification applied to health and well-being. Methods: We identified seven potential advantages of gamification from existing research and conducted a systematic literature review of empirical studies on gamification for health and well-being, assessing quality of evidence, effect type, and application domain. Results: We identified 19 papers that report empirical evidence on the effect of gamification on health and well-being. 59% reported positive, 41% mixed effects, with mostly moderate or lower quality of evidence provided. Results were clear for health-related behaviors, but mixed for cognitive outcomes. Conclusions: The current state of evidence supports that gamification can have a positive impact in health and wellbeing, particularly for health behaviors. However several studies report mixed or neutral effect. Findings need to be interpreted with caution due to the relatively small number of studies and methodological limitations present in many studies (e.g., a lack of comparison of gamified interventions to non-gamified versions of the intervention)

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

User perception of gaming element effectiveness in a corporate learning application

This Conversion Masters in Information Technology thesis gathered users' perceptions about eight gaming elements to determine their effectiveness on aspects of playability, enjoyment and intrinsic motivation needed in a gamified corporate learning application. The study focused on user opinions about a Progress Bar, Individual Leaderboard, Departmental Leaderboard, Timer, In-Game Currency, Badges, Storyline/Theme and Avatar. A gamification application containing these gaming elements was designed and developed to make the evaluation. The application entailed users learning four Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) processes needed to manage an information technology department in a telecommunications company. The application design process considered the business goals, rules, target behaviours, time limits, rewards, feedback, levels, storytelling, interest, aesthetics, replay or do-overs, user types, activity cycles, fun mechanisms and development tools needed to create a coherent, addictive, engaging and fun user experience. Player types were determined using the Brainhex online survey. Federoff's Game Playability Heuristics model was used to measure the users' perceptions about the playability of the application. Sweetser and Wyeth's Gameflow model was used to measure perceptions about the gaming elements' contribution toward creating an enjoyable experience. Malone and Lepper's Taxonomy of Intrinsic Motivation for Learning was used to measure the gaming elements' ability to promote an intrinsically motivating learning environment. Masterminds, Achievers, Conquerors and Seekers were the most prominent player types found in the Brainhex online survey for which the gamification application design then catered. The staff in the department play-tested the application to evaluate the gaming elements. Overall the Storyline/Theme, suited to Seekers and Masterminds, ranked as the most effective gaming element in this study. The users perceived artwork as an essential component of a gamified learning application. The Individual Leaderboard, suited to Conquerors, ranked very closely as the second most effective gaming element. The Storyline/Theme and Individual Leaderboard both performed the strongest against the criteria measuring the playability. The Storyline/Theme was by far the strongest from a gameflow perspective and the Individual Leaderboard from a motivation perspective. The Avatars ranked the worst across all the measurement criteria. Based on quiz results, 86 percent of the staff in the department had learned the material from the gamified training prototype developed in this work. The findings from this study will therefore serve as input for developing a full-scale gamification learning application

Developing and evaluating MindMax: promoting mental wellbeing through an Australian Football League-themed app incorporating applied games (including gamification), psychoeducation, and social connectedness

Gamification is increasingly being used as a behavioural change strategy to increase engagement with apps and technologies for mental health and wellbeing. While there is promising evidence supporting the effectiveness of individual gamification elements, there remains little evidence for its overall effectiveness. Furthermore, a lack of consistency in how ‘gamification’ and related terms (such as ‘applied games’, an umbrella term of which gamification is one type) are used has been observed within and across multiple academic fields. This contributes to the difficulty of studying gamification and decreases its accessibility to people unfamiliar with applied games. Finally, gamification has also been critiqued by both game developers and by academics for its reliance on extrinsic motivators and for the messages that gamified systems may unintentionally convey. In this context, the aims of this thesis were fourfold: 1) to iteratively co-design and develop a gamified app for mental health and wellbeing, 2) to evaluate the eventuating app, 3) to consolidate literature on gamification for mental health and wellbeing, and 4) to synthesise findings into practical guidelines for implementing gamification for mental health and wellbeing. Chapter 2 reports the first study which addresses the first aim of this thesis. Six participatory design workshops were conducted to support the development of MindMax, an Australian Football League (AFL)-themed mobile phone app aimed at AFL fans (particularly male ones) that incorporates applied games, psychoeducation, and social connectedness. Findings from these workshops were independently knowledge translated and fed back to the software development team, resulting in a MindMax prototype. This prototype was further tested with 15 one-on-one user experience testing interviews at three separate time points to iteratively refine MindMax’s design and delivery of its content. The findings of this study suggest that broadly, participants endorsed a customisable user experience with activities requiring active user participation. These specifications were reflected in the continual software updates made to MindMax. Chapters 3 and 4 report the second and third studies which address the second aim of this thesis. As regular content, performance, and aesthetic updates were applied to MindMax (following the model of the wider tech industry), a naturalistic longitudinal trial, described in Chapter 3, was deemed to be the most appropriate systematic evaluation method. In this study, participants (n=313) were given access to MindMax and asked to use it at their leisure, and surveys were sent out at multiple time points to assess their wellbeing, resilience, and help-seeking intentions. Increases in flourishing (60-day only), sense of connection to MindMax, and impersonal help-seeking intentions were observed over 30 and 60 days, suggesting that Internet-based interventions like MindMax can contribute to their users’ social connectedness and encourage their help-seeking. The third study, described in Chapter 4, reports a secondary analysis of data collected for Chapter 3, and further explores participants’ help-seeking intentions and their links to wellbeing, resilience, gender, and age. An explanatory factor analysis was conducted on Day 1 General Help-Seeking Questionnaire (GHSQ) data (n=530), with the best fitting solution resulting in three factors: personal sources, health professionals, and distal sources. In addition to providing more evidence that younger people aged 16–35 categorise apps and technologies for mental health and wellbeing like MindMax alongside other distal social sources such as phone helplines and work or school, our findings also suggest that the best way to target individuals who are least likely to seek help, particularly men, may be through these distal sources as well. Chapter 5 reports the fourth study, which addresses the third aim. In order to consolidate literature on gamification for mental health and wellbeing, this systematic review identified 70 papers that collectively reported on 50 apps and technologies for improving mental health and wellbeing. These papers were coded for gamification element, mental health and wellbeing domain, and researchers’ justification for applying gamification to improving mental health and wellbeing. This study resulted in two major findings: first, that the current application of gamification for mental health and wellbeing does not resemble the heavily critiqued mainstream application that relies on extrinsic motivators; and second, that many authors of the reviewed papers provided little or no justification for why they applied gamification to their mental health and wellbeing interventions. While the former finding is encouraging, the latter suggests that the gamification of mental health and wellbeing is not theory-driven, and is a cause for concern. Finally, to address the final aim of this thesis, all study learnings were synthesised into practical guidelines for implementing gamification for mental health and wellbeing. First, it is important to assess the suitability of implementing gamification into the intervention. Second, this implementation should ideally be integrated at a deeper, systemic level, with the explicitly qualified intention to support users, evidence-based processes, and user engagement with these processes. Third, it is important to assess the acceptability of this gamified intervention throughout its development, involving all relevant stakeholders (particularly representative end user populations). Fourth, it is important to evaluate the impact of this gamified intervention. Fifth, and finally, comprehensive and detailed documentation of this process should be provided at all stages of this process. This thesis contributes to a growing literature on the increasing importance and relevance of Internet-based resources and apps and technologies for mental health and wellbeing, particularly for young people. Given the dominance of games in society and culture across history, and the increasing contemporary prominence of digital games (also known as video games) in particular, gamification is uniquely positioned to have the potential to make large contributions to mental health and wellbeing research. In this context, this thesis contributes a systematically derived operationalisation of gamification, an evaluation of a gamified app for mental health and wellbeing, and best practice guidelines for implementing gamification for mental health and wellbeing, thereby providing frameworks that future implementations of gamified mental health and wellbeing interventions and initiatives may find useful