Use of Role-play and Gamification in a Software Project Course

Soft skills are increasingly important to the engineering profession and course modifications are often needed to ensure students have opportunities to practice them prior to graduation. This suggests that engineering programs need to go beyond simply offering industry-based capstone courses and internships. Role-play has a long history as a tool for learning. It can be used to simulate real world practices in environments where consequences can be mitigated safely. In this paper, we discuss the use of team role-play activities to simulate the experience of working in a professional, game development studio as a means of enhancing an advanced undergraduate game design course. In conjunction with the role-play, a gamification framework was used within the course to allow students to customize their course participation. Gamification was used to reward students for compliance with software process steps and for taking the initiative to improve their “soft skills”. In this project, allowing students to negotiate the nature of their activities and rewards helped them develop those skills. We are using student feedback and our own lessons learned to plan the next iteration of this course

The relationship between students’ engagement and the development of Transactive Memory Systems in MUVE: An experience report

Student engagement is a very important topic in higher education hence, it drew a lot of research interest over the years. The use of educational Multi-User Virtual Environments (MUVEs) that provide synchronous interaction, dynamic, interactive and social learning experiences have the potential to increase student engagement and contribute to their learning experience. Due to increased social and cognitive presence, the use of such environments can result in greater student engagement when compared to traditional asynchronous learning environments. In this work, we hypothesized that students’ engagement in collaborative learning activities will increase if Transactive Memory System (TMS) constructs are present. Thus, we employed the theory of TMS that emphasizes the importance of Specialization, Coordination and Credibility between members in a team. The results show that there is a significant correlation between the development of TMS and students’ engagement. In addition, further quantitative and observation analysis reveals some interesting facts about students’ engagement with respect to their collaboration in group activities

Recomendações para transformar conteúdos educacionais em jogos e promover o engajamento

Dissertação (mestrado) - Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Centro Tecnológico, Programa de Pós-Graduação em Engenharia e Gestão do Conhecimento, Florianópolis, 2022.Os jogos se apresentam como recursos de aprendizagem utilizados como suporte ao engajamento do estudante, de modo a fomentar a motivação em interagir com a mídia e, consequentemente, com o conteúdo. Entretanto, literatura aponta que artefatos de baixa qualidade contribuem para a redução de seu caráter lúdico, consistindo em um obstáculo para uma aplicação mais promissora desses recursos. Para enfrentar este esse problema, essa dissertação propõe recomendações para a tradução de conteúdos educacionais em jogos. O método de pesquisa seguiu a estrutura de uma pesquisa qualitativa, com foco na pesquisa de campo. Assim, a revisão da literatura sobre os temas mídias, aprendizagem e jogos elencaram algumas recomendações para o processo de conversão de conteúdos educacionais em jogos. Estas recomendações foram utilizadas na pesquisa de campo, a qual traduziu o curso ?Diversidade linguística no atendimento à saúde: curso introdutório em Política Linguística e Saúde?, oferecido pelo Instituto de Investigação e Desenvolvimento em Política Linguística (IPOL), em um projeto de jogo. Reuniões com o IPOL foram realizadas para levantar informações sobre a necessidade do instituto. A pesquisa de campo ainda procedeu uma análise de similares, que permitiu a aquisição de insights trazidos de produções de sucesso. Foram examinados dois aplicativos de aprendizagem de idiomas e três jogos independentes. A partir das recomendações da literatura e das ideias geradas optou-se por projetar um RPG, permitindo a aprendizagem por meio da interpretação de papéis, a transmissão de conteúdo do curso em diálogos com os personagens e missões baseadas em resoluções de problemas. A tradução do módulo 1 do curso em projeto de jogo foi realizada utilizando a técnica do storyboard, o que permitiu a apresentação do projeto para os membros do IPOL e para um grupo de imigrantes haitianos que concordou em verificar sua consistência. Por fim, as recomendações foram comparadas com a pesquisa de campo, o que resultou em 38 recomendações para a conversão de conteúdos educacionais em jogos. Estas recomendações foram categorizadas em aspectos de aprendizagem, aprendizagem e motivação, motivação e design. A pesquisa confirmou a importância da participação de especialistas do conteúdo no desenvolvimento de jogos desse tipo para a melhor resolução dos conflitos encontrados durante o processo. A abordagem colar de pérolas destacou-se como método narrativo promissor para jogos com conteúdo sério, preservando a autonomia do jogador sem prejudicar a qualidade narrativa. Espera-se que as recomendações e contribuições trazidas por esse trabalho possam facilitar o diálogo entre educadores e designers de jogos no desenvolvimento de jogos com conteúdo sério.Abstract: Games are presented as learning resources used to support student engagement, in order to encourage motivation to interact with the media and, consequently, with the content. However, literature points out that low quality artifacts contribute to the reduction of their playful feature, constituting an obstacle to a more promising application of these resources. To face that problem, this dissertation proposes recommendations for the translation of educational content into games. The research method followed the structure of a qualitative research, focusing on field research. Thus, a literature review on media, learning and games topics listed some recommendations for the process of converting educational content into games. These recommendations were used in the field research, which translated the course ?Linguistic diversity in health care: an introductory course in Language Policy and Health?, offered by the Institute for Research and Development in Language Policy (IPOL), into a game project. Meetings with IPOL were held in order to gather information about the institute's needs. The field research also carried out an analysis of similar works, which allowed the acquisition of insights brought by successful productions. Two language learning apps and three independent games were examined. Based on the recommendations in literature and its generated ideas, it was decided to design an RPG, which allowed the process of learning through role-playing, as well as the transmission of course content in dialogues with the characters and missions based on problem solving. The translation of module 1 of the course to a game project was carried out using the storyboard technique, which allowed the project to be presented to IPOL members and to a group of Haitian immigrants who agreed to verify its consistency. Finally, the recommendations were compared with the field research, which resulted in 38 recommendations for converting educational content into games. These recommendations were categorized into aspects of learning, learning and motivation, motivation and design. The research confirmed the importance of the participation of content specialists in the development of games of this type in regards to the best resolution to the conflicts encountered during the process. The pearl necklace approach stood out as a promising narrative method for games with serious content, since it preserves player autonomy without harming narrative quality. It is hoped that the recommendations and contributions brought by this work are able to facilitate the dialogue between educators and game designers during the development of games with serious content