Gamification

Gamification is the act of changing human behavior by making activities more enjoyable by making them more game-like. This could be as simple as adding rewards for completing menial tasks like giving yourself a gold star for completing all your paperwork. Gamification can also be done through more complex, corporate sponsored projects. To us, Gamification should be implemented without having to offer material incentives to change a person’s behavior. Over the past few months three attempts were made on the WPI campus to demonstrate this non-incentivized Gamification. The three experiments – “The Minefield”, “Battery Recycling Bin”, and “Trashketball” – brought about a variety of reactions from the students, faculty, and staff where apparent interest and amusement were observed

Submitting an ERASMUS + Project On Gamifying Higher Education

2019 has been the year in which climate change and climate conscience have been key concepts, the first trimester of 2020 has been determined by the coronavirus pandemic. Exactly in the same way changing external conditions make any project in need of pivoting, Higher Education has to adapt and change as well. A first identified step is the development of e-learning, but then the shorter attention span and other external reasons for the new profile of students make it difficult. Gamification was therefore identified as a possible solution. The current project describes the process of submitting a proposal of ERASMUS + project to the European Commission on the gamification of Higher Education

Rhetorical Invention in a 21st Century Technoculture: A New Ludic Framework for Learning

This dissertation proposes the ludic framework for learning as an innovative pedagogical model that privileges play, possibility, failure, and social affinity as states of being and positions for learning. The ludic framework works through rhetorics of play as a frame of reference; rhetorics of possibility and invention as a means of production; the acceptance of transformative failure; and engages with digital communities to further knowledge through social affinity while being grounded in constructionist learning theories. The principles that facilitate this are: curiosity, play, flexibility, metacognition, collaboration, invention, persistence, and creativity. To demonstrate this, the dissertation has two case studies: a semester project that explains the need and procedures for teaching technologies in a workflow and a three-dimensional representation of the research in Minecraft: Education Edition

Motivation and Learning in an Online Collaborative Project Using Gamification

In 2012, there were 2.9 million students enrolled in graduate degrees and 22% were taking strictly online courses (Kena et al., 2014). Many students are not motivated to participate in collaborative learning experiences in online courses (Dirkx & Smith, 2004). Gamification, the inclusion of game elements in non-game contexts, has been shown to have a positive impact on motivation (Deterding, 2012; Kapp, 2012). Prior work has focused on structural gamification including elements such as points, levels, and badges as extrinsic motivators to traditional course activities. The current study explored content gamification including narrative, role-play, interactivity, and feedback in an online collaborative learning environment. Thirty-nine master’s degree students enrolled in an online educational technology program participated in a six-week, collaborative project as part of their online research methods course. Within two sections of a research methods course, students were randomly assigned to either a collaborative project with no gamification or a collaborative project with gamification. Outcome measures included motivation, learning, and student perceptions. Results were not statistically significant but indicated a trend for increased motivation, higher levels of satisfaction with the collaborative experience, and greater improvement from pre- to posttest scores among those experiencing the gamified treatment. Discussion will focus on considerations for utilizing specific types of gamification in online collaborative projects

Studying and designing the incorporation of gamification into a menstrual cycle tracking application in collaboration with a game company

Abstract. This thesis focuses on two topics of study. The first part will cover a study focused on exploring the needs and expectations game development businesses have for university collaboration. As part of this it will be investigated what kind of experience and knowledge game development businesses look for in students. Secondly, the thesis will look into utilizing gamification as a way of improving menstrual cycle tracking applications. Materials for these studies have been gathered during a research internship at the INTERACT research unit. The research methods utilized comprise of a literature review and qualitative research. This study was motivated by the traineeship at INTERACT, and by participation in a gamification project through Ikune Ltd. The first study consisted of reaching out to game development companies in Finland and conducting semi-structured interviews with them. The study had one respondent but nevertheless provided useful results. Students should have practical knowledge of programming languages, enthusiasm towards the company’s projects, and a portfolio showcasing their skills. Companies can benefit from collaboration by scouting the talent of students, networking with the university and students, and potentially utilizing student resources to prototype ideas. The second study consisted of practical user interface prototype design, along with a user study investigating gamification and the participants perspective of the topic in menstrual cycle tracking applications. Participants were limited to two due to schedule constraints. This study still provided useful results, with many of them agreeing with earlier literature. As an interesting new finding, participants were not opposed to unusual experimental features when they seemed like medical tools or interventions. A list of important considerations for future application development was collated, with the ability to customize both the appearance and functionality of the application being among the most key findings. The findings of the first study are useful to a multitude of groups, namely university students, companies considering university collaboration, persons interested in working in the game development industry, and possibly universities if they want to provide courses more directly related to game development. The study offers students relevant skills they should learn if they aim to work in the game development industry. Likewise, the study offers companies with what they could stand to gain from collaboration with universities and students. The second study is more contained, ultimately providing a list of application design considerations for gamified menstrual cycle tracking applications. These findings should be useful for future application developers and possibly for academia for the sake of future research into the topic

Gamification of the Dar Si Hmad Fog Water Harvesting Project in Morocco: Creating a role-playing course to integrate STEM and the Humanities

Our team created a role-playing curriculum based on the world’s largest fogwater harvesting project, pioneered by Dar Si Hmad, a Moroccan NGO. We created processes to gamify a course that integrates STEM and humanities content within the social, scientific and engineering context of the fog project. We developed characters, team activities and assignments to help students better understand social and cultural factors embedded in engineering problems. We also developed material for the NGO to use at the COP22 climate conference

Can Moodle be used for structural gamification?

The use of the information technologies is nowadays more and more common in the learning-teaching process. As a consequence, the research on instructional design has been reactivated paying special attention to its adaptation to this new digital world. Task based instruction has proved to be effective for customized systems and student-centred learning. In these models, the motivation and the active role of students are definitely the key. In fact, this is one of the main challenges in education and, in particular, in online education. Precisely, motivation, progressiveness and instant feedback are the pillars of gamification. This fact makes gamification a promising research line in education. Gamification can be approached in two different ways: structural and content gamification. Besides, we have access to the appropriate technology that can make these pedagogical theories come true, creating real technological learning environments. Despite being conscious of the inconveniences they still have, teaching platforms are widely used in the educational world nowadays. In this paper, Moodle has been analysed in order to study its suitability to implement structurally gamified teaching proposals. It has been identified what can be done with the existing tools and what new functionalities could be added for a successful approach to gamification, taking into account that the main aim is to maximize learning

Gamification of telematics data to enhance operators’ behaviour for improvement of machine productivity in loading cycles

Construction industry is suffering from low productivity rate in various projects such as excavation. Although this issue is discussed in literature and several approaches are proposed to address it, productivity rate is still low in construction industry compared to other domains like manufacturing. Three core components directly affect the overall productivity in construction sector, i.e. labour productivity, raw material productivity, and machine or equipment productivity. With a focus on construction machinery, three factors influence productivity at excavation sites; i.e. 1) machine-based productivity and its configuration, 2) site layout and environmental conditions, and 3) operators’ behaviour. Operators’ competence and motivation represent two key parameters that affect their behaviour. On one side, gamification has attracted a growing area of interest both in literature and practice, seeking to place a layer of entertainment and pleasure to the top of serious activities (with a focus on improving the applicant’s motivation and behaviour). On the other side, telematics systems are utilized to collect operational data of the machine, and calculate its productivity rate. Telematics data are presented to operators (via a built-in screen available in the cabin of the machine) to provide real-time feedback about machine performance. In addition, these data can support machine owners to perceive operators’ behaviour on a real-time basis. To conclude, telematics systems are providing real-time data which can be a great input into gamification. A guideline is proposed in this dissertation that helps gamification designers to develop more transparent gamification models. This guideline is utilized to introduce a gamification model that gamifies telematics data with a focus on enhancing operators’ behaviour (machine productivity) in loading and transferring activities. The model was implemented at two sites(one recycling and one mining site) and could encourage operators (who were operating wheel-loaders and dump-trucks) to prevent redundant activities like texting, phoning, and even eating while operating the machine. Subsequently, it enhanced overall machine productivity up to 37% during the site observation. To summarize, a gamified platform in which different operators from different organizations can share their achievements, or can get scored and ranked in a leader-board will potentially lead to a more proper operators’ behaviour at work and subsequently can improve overall productivity rate at construction sites