Student experience of gamified learning: a qualitative approach

Student engagement and student outcomes in Higher Education continue to be the subject of academic concern, and thus receive research attention. To address these concerns, we aim to explore the use of gamification to enhance student engagement, and thereby improving student learning and performance. Gamification represents the use of game elements to enhance engagement in activities such as learning.  This paper highlights the use of game elements such as: leader boards, scores for activities, and multiplayer (group) activities.  The paper does this by exploring students’ learning journeys, as well as their experience of modules in which gamification had been introduced. Group-based competitive activities were introduced to modules undertaken by business students, student nurses, and paramedic students.  Students undertaking these modules were invited to participate in semi-structured interviews.  Twelve students drawn from the three disciplines took part in these semi-structured interviews, which were digitally recorded to enable production of accurate transcripts. Thematic analysis was used to identify key themes from the interviews. To explain student responses and their learning experience, four themes were developed; challenge, difference, group processes, and competition. Students often presented themselves as enjoying challenge, although this was sometimes contrasted with enjoyment of ‘easy’ activities.  Challenge was presented not only as a motivational factor, but also sometimes as a barrier to success.  This sense of challenge was often conceptually linked to students’ perception of difference within their gamified learning, which was pedagogically distinct from their typical learning experience.  Most, but not all, expressed positive views of this difference.  As with the theme of challenge, discussion of difference could be both positive and negative.  Participants highlighted competition as a positive factor.  The competition between groups influenced some group processes.  Some students noted previous challenges involved in group-work, such as unequal work distribution.  Participants observed the potential for intra-group friction, while identifying the positive learning outcomes of group work.  Taken together, the analysis suggests that competitive group work is a beneficial strategy for enhancing student engagement and performance

Coping Cycle and its importance when designing an Assessment: Reflections on the Learning Process

Live student projects in a Higher Education (hereinafter HE) setting are vital in business education as they allow for a practice-based and holistic development of employability skills. This empirical paper illustrates how the assessment design and regime may affect student engagement and learning in live student projects. The approach advocated encompasses the conduct of projects that take advantage of a simple principle in learning, the utilization of the coping cycle as a means for double loop learning. The data used as evidence in this work focus on the project teams’ Facebook conversations. The descriptive statistics and the qualitative data provide an empirical basis for the claim that assessment design leads to a particular kind of learning and emotional journey for the students and in this case potentially facilitating double-loop, deeper learning. The findings can inform HE academics and teaching practitioners who are developing educational student-run projects and can provide insights for educational pedagogy

Message layering: a grounded theory of overcoming message limitations in social media communication

"A thesis submitted to the University of Bedfordshire, in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy".Using the Grounded Theory research method, this research has explored various forms of social media communication, including emoticons, emoji, GIFs, stickers and hashtags. Further, this study has produced a theory of message layering in social media communication. This research was conducted on data consisting of social media comments, posts and conversations in the form of online observations, as well as recordings and transcripts collected, based on face-to-face interviews. Participants consisted of members of the general public who communicate on different social media platforms such as Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram. The data was collected and analysed using classic Grounded Theory procedures and guidelines, comprising theoretical sensitivity, theoretical sampling and constant comparison, as well as substantive and theoretical coding. This study identifies that social media communication has various limitations and messages can be brief, ambiguous and lacking in structure. It is evident that the main concern of communicators (both senders and receivers) on social media is to overcome such message limitations. Further, this study explains the basic social psychological process of message layering. Message layering is a theory developed in this study and is characterised by its two sub-core categories of Message structuring and message regulating. Message structuring is about combining and toning to give structure to messages. Message regulating is about associating and fitting to give meaning. Through these means, communicators on social media are seen to process the main concern of overcoming message limitations. Message layering allows communicators to give structure and meaning to messages. Theoretical explanations show that clarity and confusion in understanding what the message indicates is a result of how senders and receivers structure and give meaning to messages. However, it is also identified that senders often structure and assign meaning to messages differently to the receivers of the same message. This thesis makes contributions to knowledge by offering a new perspective on looking at social media messages. It suggests new concepts of combining, selecting, classifying, toning, making connections, assuming positions, associating, recognising types, fitting, applying knowledge and lastly, presents a typology of social media communicators consisting of stranger corresponders, distant corresponders and close corresponders. Moreover, the theory of message layering has implications for practice. Current practices addressing social media communication consider social media messages based on general definitions and understanding of words and pictures only. However, the theory of message layering suggests the importance of considering social media messages from the perspectives of both senders and receivers and further considering the processes of how senders and receivers structure and ascribe meaning to messages

Moving Away from the Norms: Adopting Classic Grounded Theory in Information Systems Research

Information Systems (IS) discipline have evolved over the years and new areas of research have emerged such as Artificial intelligence (AI), Big data, cyber and internet related research. But often researchers tend/ to rely on existing theories which have either been outdated or are not often fit for purpose in a research setting. Due to this, there is often a need for development of new theories to allow researchers to approach research from a different theoretical lens. We suggest that this need for new theory development can be met by the adoption of Classic Grounded theory (CGT) methodology within the IS discipline. CGT is argued to be an approach specifically designed for theory development and allows researchers to make contributions in a form of new theories. We argue that by using CGT methodology researchers can develop new theories which area unique and tend to help providing new theoretical perspectives for future researc

The mediating impact of organizational innovation on the relationship between fintech innovations and sustainability performance

The paper explores the impact of digital payment systems, blockchain technology, and AI/machine learning on innovation and sustainability in financial organizations. As part of the analysis, the study has adopted an explanatory research design and has used SmartPLS in order to analyze the data collected from 230 professionals of different fields through a structured questionnaire. The results show positive effects of digital payment systems and blockchain technology on organizations’ innovations with the impact of digital payments being the most pronounced. Empirical results suggest that these technologies are important to improve sustainability performance, depending on measures of internal consistency and discriminant validity among the proposed constructs. Al, also machine learning, has the highest relevance with environmental sustainability, thereby underlining the importance and work of such measures. Based on the Resource-Based View (RBV) theory, the study also explains the need for the organization to assimilate these innovations to enhance the organizational operations, customer satisfaction, and compliance with the laws. The study highlights fintech’s potential to address environmental issues and enhance societal goals, but geographical limitations may obstruct its transportability.gold o

Pre-storage melatonin treatment maintains cell membrane integrity, reduces fruit browning and decay incidence in guava (Psidium guajava)

An experiments were conducted during 2021–22 at ICAR-Indian Agricultural Research Institute, New Delhi to study the impact of melatonin (MT) on key characteristics of guava (Psidium guajava L. cv. Barafkhana). Guava fruits were treated with different MT concentrations (200, 400, 600 and 800 μM) and stored at 10±1°C with 85–90% RH. The research revealed that treating with 600 μM MT notably decreased polyphenoloxidase activity by 57%, leading to delayed peel browning and also suppressed polygalacturonase (PG) activity by approximately 45% and pectine methylesterase activity by about 73%, resulting in higher firmness (5.33 N). Following a 20-days period of cold storage, significant reductions in electrolyte leakage, hydrogen peroxide accumulation and lipoxygenase activity were observed, thereby preserving cell membrane integrity. Additionally, MT stimulated the antioxidant defense system, boosted proline content accumulation, and enhanced phenylalanine ammonia-lyase activity. Together, these effects contributed to enhanced resistance against postharvest fungal decay (8.75%). In conclusion, MT at a concentration of 600 μM proves to be an effective postharvest treatment for maintaining texture, reducing fruit decay and extending the shelf-life of guava during cold storage

Antibiotic consumption at community pharmacies : a multicenter repeated prevalence surveillance using WHO methodology

Background: Antibiotics are losing their effectiveness because of the rapid emergence of resistant bacteria. Unnecessary antimicrobial use increases antimicrobial resistance (AMR). There are currently no published data on antibiotic consumption in Pakistan at the community level. This is a concern given high levels of self-purchasing of antibiotics in Pakistan and variable knowledge regarding antibiotics and AMR among physicians and pharmacists. Objective: The objective of this repeated prevalence survey was to assess the pattern of antibiotic consumption data among different community pharmacies to provide a baseline for developing future pertinent initiatives. Methods: A multicenter repeated prevalence survey conducted among community pharmacies in Lahore, a metropolitan city with a population of approximately 10 million people, from October to December 2017 using the World Health Organization (WHO) methodology for a global program on surveillance of antimicrobial consumption. Results: The total number of defined daily doses (DDDs) dispensed per patient ranged from 0.1 to 50.0. In most cases, two DDDs per patient were dispensed from pharmacies. Co-amoxiclav was the most commonly dispensed antibiotic with a total number of DDDs at 1018.15. Co-amoxiclav was followed by ciprofloxacin with a total number of 486.6 DDDs and azithromycin with a total number of 472.66 DDDs. The least consumed antibiotics were cefadroxil, cefotaxime, amikacin, and ofloxacin, with overall consumption highest in December. Conclusion: The study indicated high antibiotic usage among community pharmacies in Lahore, Pakistan particularly broad-spectrum antibiotics, which were mostly dispensed inappropriately. The National action plan of Pakistan on AMR should be implemented by policymakers including restrictions on the dispensing of antimicrobials

PROCEEDINGS OF THE 22ND INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON ENTERPRISE INFORMATION SYSTEMS (ICEIS), VOL 2

Ubiquitous computing technology, sensor networks, and ambient intelligence have initiated the birth of pervasive health. While successful in many environments, in healthcare, monitoring technologies have been known to cause undesirable effects, such as increases in stress in patients being observed. To date, the use of this monitoring technology and its effect on human behaviour have not been thoroughly investigated, meaning future system designs may result in (preventable) undesirable effects. Pervasive healthcare's envisioned deep intertwining with the patient's day-to-day care, makes patient's socio-cultural values a fundamental consideration. In this paper, we present a semiotics-oriented approach for analysing factors, identified in the literature and believed to influence patient's behaviour, from both physical and social perspectives to aid the design of socially aware and patient-centric ubiquitous monitoring environments that are successfully adopted and used whilst aiding the incorporation of social aspects of pervasive technologies in the design

Proceedings of the 22nd International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems - Volume 2

Ubiquitous computing technology, sensor networks, and ambient intelligence have initiated the birth of pervasive health. While successful in many environments, in healthcare, monitoring technologies have been known to cause undesirable effects, such as increases in stress in patients being observed. To date, the use of this monitoring technology and its effect on human behaviour have not been thoroughly investigated, meaning future system designs may result in (preventable) undesirable effects. Pervasive healthcare’s envisioned deep intertwining with the patient’s day-to-day care, makes patient’s socio-cultural values a fundamental consideration. In this paper, we present a semiotics-oriented approach for analysing factors, identified in the literature and believed to influence patient’s behaviour, from both physical and social perspectives to aid the design of socially aware and patient-centric ubiquitous monitoring environments that are successfully adopted and used whilst aiding the incorporation of social aspects of pervasive technologies in the design.pub date is estimate, not present on websit