Gamification Guidelines: Education

Ludificação consiste na utilização de características típicas dos jogos em aplicações cujo propósito não é o entretenimento, de forma a melhorar a motivação e os resultados dos seus utilizadores. A implementação deste conceito conta com vários casos de sucesso, no entanto, o contrário também é observável, com os casos de insucesso a serem muitas vezes causados pelo design pobre dos sistemas ludificados. Este trabalho tem como propósito a criação de diretrizes que ajudem a combater o problema do design pobre na ludificação. De modo a o tornar mais focado, decidiu-se analisar o mundo da educação, mais precisamente o ensino superior, para se perceber se um sistema de ensino ludificado é capaz de ajudar os alunos a terminarem os seus cursos sem contratempos. Foram estudadas algumas das mais populares frameworks de apoio à ludificação, dando origem à criação de um conjunto de cinco diretrizes que juntam os pontos fortes de cada uma delas, enquanto colmatam os seus pontos fracos. Estas diretrizes foram usadas no desenvolvimento de um plugin para o Moodle direcionado a estudantes universitários, o “Gamification Banner”. Todo um sistema ludificado foi preparado, não só o plugin do Moodle, mas também o curso onde ele se insere. Este sistema foi testado por um grupo de voluntários que o avaliou, e da avaliação resultante comprovou-se que os estudantes são a favor da ludificação, embora não tenha sido possível provar que as suas notas são influenciadas positivamente, dado o curto tempo dos testes. Conclui-se que vale a pena investir na ludificação do ensino superior, e que se deve continuar a estudar a possibilidade de as notas dos alunos serem influenciadas positivamente por sistemas ludificados. O sucesso do sistema desenvolvido espelha-se nas diretrizes que ajudaram a criá-lo. Estas demonstram potencial, mas precisam de serem testadas noutros cenários.Gamification consists in the usage of typical game elementsin non-entertainment applications in order to improve the motivation and results of their users. There are several success stories of the implementation of this concept, however, the opposite is also observed, with failed cases often being caused by a poor design of the gamified system. The purpose of this document is to create guidelines that can prevent the problem of poor gamification design. In order to make it more focused, it was decided to analyze the world of education, more precisely college education, to understand if a gamified educational system can help students finish their courses without any setbacks. Some of the most popular gamification design frameworks were studied, leading to the creation of a set of five guidelines that bring together their strengths while addressing their weaknesses. These guidelines were used for the development of a Moodle plugin aimed at college students called “Gamification Banner”. A whole gamified system was prepared, not only the Moodle plugin, but also the course in which it is inserted. This system was tested by a group of volunteers who evaluated it, and from the resulting assessment it was found that students favor gamification, although it was not possible to prove that their grades are positively influenced given the short time of the tests. It is concluded that it is worth investing in gamification in higher education, and that the possibility of grades being positively influenced by gamified systems should be further studied. The success of the developed system is reflected in the guidelines that helped to create it. These show potential but need to be tested in other scenarios

Genetic divergence of rubber tree estimated by multivariate techniques and microsatellite markers

Genetic diversity of 60 Hevea genotypes, consisting of Asiatic, Amazonian, African and IAC clones, and pertaining to the genetic breeding program of the Agronomic Institute (IAC), Brazil, was estimated. Analyses were based on phenotypic multivariate parameters and microsatellites. Five agronomic descriptors were employed in multivariate procedures, such as Standard Euclidian Distance, Tocher clustering and principal component analysis. Genetic variability among the genotypes was estimated with 68 selected polymorphic SSRs, by way of Modified Rogers Genetic Distance and UPGMA clustering. Structure software in a Bayesian approach was used in discriminating among groups. Genetic diversity was estimated through Nei's statistics. The genotypes were clustered into 12 groups according to the Tocher method, while the molecular analysis identified six groups. In the phenotypic and microsatellite analyses, the Amazonian and IAC genotypes were distributed in several groups, whereas the Asiatic were in only a few. Observed heterozygosity ranged from 0.05 to 0.96. Both high total diversity (HT' = 0.58) and high gene differentiation (G st' = 0.61) were observed, and indicated high genetic variation among the 60 genotypes, which may be useful for breeding programs. The analyzed agronomic parameters and SSRs markers were effective in assessing genetic diversity among Hevea genotypes, besides proving to be useful for characterizing genetic variability

Development of microsatellite markers for identifying Brazilian Coffea arabica varieties

Microsatellite markers, also known as SSRs (Simple Sequence Repeats), have proved to be excellent tools for identifying variety and determining genetic relationships. A set of 127 SSR markers was used to analyze genetic similarity in twenty five Coffea arabica varieties. These were composed of nineteen commercially important Brazilians and six interspecific hybrids of Coffea arabica, Coffea canephora and Coffealiberica. The set used comprised 52 newly developed SSR markers derived from microsatellite enriched libraries, 56 designed on the basis of coffee SSR sequences available from public databases, 6 already published, and 13 universal chloroplast microsatellite markers. Only 22 were polymorphic, these detecting 2-7 alleles per marker, an average of 2.5. Based on the banding patterns generated by polymorphic SSR loci, the set of twenty-five coffee varieties were clustered into two main groups, one composed of only Brazilian varieties, and the other of interspecific hybrids, with a few Brazilians. Color mutants could not be separated. Clustering was in accordance with material genealogy thereby revealing high similarity

Functional markers for gene mapping and genetic diversity studies in sugarcane

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>The database of sugarcane expressed sequence tags (EST) offers a great opportunity for developing molecular markers that are directly associated with important agronomic traits. The development of new EST-SSR markers represents an important tool for genetic analysis. In sugarcane breeding programs, functional markers can be used to accelerate the process and select important agronomic traits, especially in the mapping of quantitative traits loci (QTL) and plant resistant pathogens or qualitative resistance loci (QRL). The aim of this work was to develop new simple sequence repeat (SSR) markers in sugarcane using the sugarcane expressed sequence tag (SUCEST database).</p> <p>Findings</p> <p>A total of 365 EST-SSR molecular markers with trinucleotide motifs were developed and evaluated in a collection of 18 genotypes of sugarcane (15 varieties and 3 species). In total, 287 of the EST-SSRs markers amplified fragments of the expected size and were polymorphic in the analyzed sugarcane varieties. The number of alleles ranged from 2-18, with an average of 6 alleles per locus, while polymorphism information content values ranged from 0.21-0.92, with an average of 0.69. The discrimination power was high for the majority of the EST-SSRs, with an average value of 0.80. Among the markers characterized in this study some have particular interest, those that are related to bacterial defense responses, generation of precursor metabolites and energy and those involved in carbohydrate metabolic process.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>These EST-SSR markers presented in this work can be efficiently used for genetic mapping studies of segregating sugarcane populations. The high Polymorphism Information Content (PIC) and Discriminant Power (DP) presented facilitate the QTL identification and marker-assisted selection due the association with functional regions of the genome became an important tool for the sugarcane breeding program.</p