Architecture of Engagement: Autonomy-Supportive Leadership for Instructional Improvement

This multiple paper dissertation addresses the importance of improving student success in online higher education programs by providing support for instructors. The autonomy-supportive structures to improve instructional practice are explained through three main domains, including instructional development, instructional design, and instructional practice. The first paper addresses instructional leadership with the theoretical foundations and practical considerations necessary for instructional leaders. Recommendations are made to use microcredentials or digital badges to scaffold programming using self-determination theory. The second paper addresses the importance of instructional design in improving instructional practice including the intentionality involved in implementing a gamification strategy to improve online student motivation. The third paper addresses instructional practice with a mixed-method sequential explanatory case study. Using the community of inquiry framework, this paper explains intentional course design, course facilitation, and student perceptions of the digital powerups strategy. The conclusion considers implications for practice and the need for instructional leaders to scaffold an architecture of engagement to support instructors and improve student success

Gamification in higher education and stem : a systematic review of literature

In recent years, gamification, the use of game elements in non-game contexts, has drawn the attention of educators due to the possibility of making learning more motivating and engaging; this led to an increase of research in the field. Despite the availability of literature reviews about gamification and its effects, no work to this date has focused exclusively on Higher Education (HE). Next, worldwide there is an increasing demand for skilled Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) professionals that meet the challenges related to scientific and technological innovations of the 21st Century. This lead to the need of strengthening STEM Higher Education. This brings us to the purpose of this work: presenting a systematic literature review of empirical studies about gamification STEM related Higher Education. This review study started from a systematic mapping design of 'Web of Science' articles, with following inclusion criteria: empirical gamification studies set up in HE, published between 2000 and 2016; focusing on undergraduate or graduate students; in the STEM knowledge field, and set up in authentic settings. An initial search resulted in 562 potentially relevant articles. After applying all selection criteria, only 18 studies could be retained. 12 additional articles were included by analyzing references from earlier literature reviews, resulting in 30 studies to be included. Analysis results show how a combination of game elements (e.g. leaderboards, badges, points and other combinations) positively affects students' performance, attendance, goal orientation and attitude towards mostly computer science related subjects. The analysis results also point at a lack of studies in certain STEM areas, a lack of studies that identify the particular game element associated with the positive differential impact on student performance; a lack of validated psychometric measurements, and lack of focus on student variables that could/should be taken into account as mediating/moderating variables clarifying the impact of gamification in the HE focus on STEM learning and teaching

Autonomy in Video Games and Gamification

In the past decade, gamification (using game elements in non-gaming tasks to enhance motivation and engagement) has become a popular concept in many industries, but few studies have explored the principles under which it works. Self-determination theory suggests three psychological needs that gamification fulfills: competence, relatedness, and autonomy. Autonomy, a person\u27s perception that they have the ability to act however they choose, has emerged as an important, yet less-studied aspect in gamification. Inclusion of autonomy in gamification should foster engagement, enjoyment, and better performance. An experiment inspired by the above was carried out in which a sample of college students (N = 57) played a video game called Super Mario Bros. Crossover with either the choice to customize the aesthetics of their character and background (autonomy-supportive) or no choice of aesthetics (non-supportive). It was hypothesized that conditions involving more choice would lead to higher perceived autonomy and performance, and that perceived autonomy would be positively correlated with engagement, enjoyment, and performance. The manipulation resulted in no significant difference in perceived autonomy or performance, and perceived autonomy was only significantly positively correlated with enjoyment. Prior Super Mario Bros. experience was also found to positively correlate with perceived autonomy in the autonomy-supportive condition. The choice of aesthetics does not appear to have been sufficiently strong enough to increase perceived autonomy in this context

Connecting Undergraduate Students as Partners in Computer Science Teaching and Research

Connecting undergraduate students as partners can lead to the enhancement of the undergraduate experience and allow students to see the different sides of the university. Such holistic perspectives may better inform academic career choices and postgraduate study. Furthermore, student involvement in course development has many potential benefits. This paper outlines a framework for connecting research and teaching within Computer Science- though this is applicable across other disciplines. Three case studies are considered to illustrate the approach. The first case study involves students in their honours’ stage (level 6, typically 3rd year) project, the second an undergraduate intern between stages 5 and 6, and finally, a MSc (level 7) project. All three case studies have actively involved students in core parts of the University’s teaching and research activities, producing usable software systems to support these efforts. We consider this as a continuing engagement process to enhance the undergraduate learning experience within Computer Science

Maximising gain for minimal pain: Utilising natural game mechanics

This paper considers the application of natural games mechanics within higher education as a vehicle to encourage student engagement and achievement of desired learning outcomes. It concludes with desiderata of features for a learning environment when used for assessment and a reflection on the gap between current and aspired learning provision. The context considered is higher (tertiary) education, where the aims are both to improve students’ engagement with course content and also to bring about potential changes in the students’ learning behaviour. Whilst traditional approaches to teaching and learning may focus on dealing with large classes, where the onus is frequently on efficiency and on the effectiveness of feedback in improving understanding and future performance, intelligent systems can provide technology to enable alternative methods that can cope with large classes that preserve the cost-benefits. However, such intelligent systems may also offer improved learning outcomes via a personalised learning experience. This paper looks to exploit particular properties which emerge from the game playing process and seek to engage them in a wider educational context. In particular we aim to use game engagement and Flow as natural dynamics that can be exploited in the learning experience

Practice makes perfect – gamification of a competitive learning experience

The ability to provide and implement software solutions is a fundamental component of a computer scientist curriculum. Commonly referred to as the ability to program, this task involves the development of programs to address everyday problems. Over the last decade teaching practices have evolved alongside programming languages to facilitate the learning process. While abstracting the level of understanding has helped students with the fundamentals of software development, issues related to students’ engagement and motivation are still not adequately addressed. With motivation being a vital component of the students’ life cycle and at the basis of their engagement, the concept of software engineering introduced in the class needs to be revised and become more engaging so as to be practised thoroughly by the students. To address these challenges, educators have devised numerous frameworks to allow students to hone their programming skills. The idea of embedding gaming aspects into the learning cycle has led to the development of techniques such as serious games and game-based learning, while more recent techniques have been unified under the term gamification. Several researchers have incorporated the gamification concept into computer science classes in order to improve students’ engagement with the teaching material, with early evaluations confirming the effectiveness of this approach. The present study focuses on the use of a gamification platform to create stimulating content and increase motivation. Students were presented with a new gamification system designed to attract and hold their attention through a number of programming challenges in the form of a contest. The results of the experiment demonstrate the students’ behavioural changes towards a deeper cognitive engagement. The paper then further discusses the challenges that have arisen in this new learning environment, such as demotivation of students with low contest rankings. Teaching how to write good software has been part of an ongoing debate for the last decade. With student motivation being a central component, this paper discusses the use of a gamification environment to engage students with the teaching material and reinforce the concepts of software engineering introduced in class

APPLICATION OF GAMIFICATION IN INTRODUCTION TO PROGRAMMING: A CASE STUDY

Institution of higher educations has struggled to provide engaging method to learn programming although effort has been made by educators but often with limited success. The question is how best to teach introductory to programming for novices students is often not addressed properly. This is because learning programming for college students especially for new learners in programming present many challenges such as subject difficulty, lack of motivation in doing exercises, passiveness in class and diversity of student abilities. Since students often faced a lot of difficulties when learning introductory of programming, gamification has the potential to provide a way to promote students’ motivation and engagement while also providing feedback on the students’ level of competency of the learned material. Gamification is the process of incorporating game elements into education in an effort to increase student engagement.Thus, there appears to be a good fit between introductory of programming and gamification. Taking these elements into consideration, this paper seeks to apply the concept of gamification to semester 1 students taking Java Programming as the first level of programming subject.  Some best practices in gamification such as competitions, incorporating engaging games elements, scoring using rewards and levels, badges, providing feedback, and providing homework to encourage informal learning are going to be applied. Finally, several popular online applications such as Kahoot, Online Crossword Puzzle and Online Quiz were also designed to see the impact on these gamification tools towards learning of students. The game would be designed to have 3 levels that increase in difficulties with competition as a core element to increase student’s engagement. This paper would also seeks to design the  user evaluation form that can be  used to  determine the effects of applying gamification on the student’s engagement, motivation level, and understanding of the topic in introductory programming subject. Through the research findings it could provide a platform in formulating alternative ways besides the traditional teaching method for educators in creating educational programming games and applying it to teach novices in introductory programming subjects.&nbsp

Having Fun in Learning Formal Specifications

There are many benefits in providing formal specifications for our software. However, teaching students to do this is not always easy as courses on formal methods are often experienced as dry by students. This paper presents a game called FormalZ that teachers can use to introduce some variation in their class. Students can have some fun in playing the game and, while doing so, also learn the basics of writing formal specifications in the form of pre- and post-conditions. Unlike existing software engineering themed education games such as Pex and Code Defenders, FormalZ takes the deep gamification approach where playing gets a more central role in order to generate more engagement. This short paper presents our work in progress: the first implementation of FormalZ along with the result of a preliminary users' evaluation. This implementation is functionally complete and tested, but the polishing of its user interface is still future work