Farias, Roberto

Hamari, J.

Oliveira, W.

Studies on gameful approaches in education have constantly sought to identify users' motivation and experience. However, most of these studies have focused exclusively on students' perspectives without considering the teachers' motivational and affective issues. Thus, although the community already has considerable knowledge regarding motivational and affective issues related to students' experience, little is known about teachers' acceptance of using gameful approaches in education. starting to face this challenge, in this paper, we present a case study (N=41) analyzing the teachers' acceptance of the use of a gamified educational system. The main results indicate that previous experience with distance education and gamification can positively affect the perceived ease of use of gamified educational systems. However, unlike expected, experience with educational technology can not significantly affect perceived ease of use. Our results contribute to the fields of educational technologies and gamification in education by presenting the teachers' perceptions regarding a gamified educational system in education.Peer reviewe

Oliveira, Wilk

Hamari, Juho

Trepo - Institutional Repository of Tampere University

An early case study analyzing teachers’ acceptancetowards of the use of gameful approaches ineducation in BrazilRoberto FariasSecretary Education of Rio de JaneiroRio de Janeiro, Brazilrobertofsilva@educacao.rj.gov.brWilk Oliveira, Juho HamariTampere UniversityTampere, Finland{wilk.oliveira, juho.hamari}@tuni.fiAbstract—Studies on gameful approaches in education haveconstantly sought to identify users’ motivation and experience.However, most of these studies have focused exclusively onstudents’ perspectives without considering the teachers’ motiva-tional and affective issues. Thus, although the community alreadyhas considerable knowledge regarding motivational and affectiveissues related to students’ experience, little is known aboutteachers’ acceptance of using gameful approaches in education.starting to face this challenge, in this paper, we present a casestudy (N = 41) analyzing the teachers’ acceptance of the useof a gamified educational system. The main results indicate thatprevious experience with distance education and gamification canpositively affect the perceived ease of use of gamified educationalsystems. However, unlike expected, experience with educationaltechnology can not significantly affect perceived ease of use. Ourresults contribute to the fields of educational technologies andgamification in education by presenting the teachers’ perceptionsregarding a gamified educational system in education.Index Terms—Gameful approaches, Gamified education,Teachers’ acceptance, Teachers’ perspective, Case studyI. INTRODUCTIONGamification (i.e., the approach of transforming systems,services, and activities to afford similar motivational bene-fits as games better often do [1], [2]) became a gamefulapproach known worldwide [3] and used in different areas(e.g., marketing [4], health [5], and education [6]). Especially,gamification has been widely used in education (becomingthe area with the highest number of studies on gamification)[7], generating great interest from the educational technologycommunity. The interest in using gamification in educationhas also led to the development of gameful approaches (e.g.,gamified educational systems), aimed at improving students’motivation during different types of academic tasks [8].This work has been supported by the Academy of Finland FlagshipProgramme [Grant No. 337653 - Forest-Human-Machine Interplay (UNITE)].The authors would like to thank the company Eagle Soluções Educacionais eTecnlógicas Adaptativas Ltda./EAGLEEDU, for providing the system Eagle-edu free of charge for research purposes through the internal researchcollaboration project 2022/6202-3.1.Wilk Oliveira is a managing partner of the company that commercializesthe system Eagle-edu.In the last few years, several studies have sought to analyzethe effects of gamification on students’ experiences (e.g.,learning outcomes [9], engagement [10], and flow state [8]).If on the one hand, it is positive to analyze the effects ofgamification on the students’ experience, on the other hand,there is a lack of studies investigating the acceptance ofteachers regarding gamification [11], [12], thus, making thecommunity’s knowledge limited about how teachers acceptgamification in education. At the same time, often, the teachersare the main ones responsible for deciding whether or not touse gamification in educational tasks [13]. Thus, without aclear understanding of teachers’ perception of gamificationin education, it becomes difficult to overcome this barrierand make gamification used in education effectively, reachingstudents broadly and positively [13], [14].To start facing this challenge, we investigated the teachers’acceptance of the use of gamified educational systems. Thus,we used the technology acceptance model (TAM) [15] toanalyze the perception of 41 teachers towards the use of agamified educational system. The study was organized intotwo steps: first, the use of a gamified educational system(called Eagle-edu) and second, identification of teachers’perception towards the gamified educational system (i.e., usingthe TAM).The main results obtained indicate that i) the teachers’acceptance level of gamification (during the system usage)was positive, ii) previous experience with distance educationand gamification positively affected the perceived ease of useof the gamified educational system, and iii) experience witheducational technology did not significantly affect perceivedease of use. The results contribute to the fields of educationaltechnologies and gamification in education, demonstratinghow teachers perceive gamification while bringing new in-sights into how to treat the use of gamification in educationconsidering the teachers’ perception.II. RESEARCH DESIGNIn this study, we aimed to investigate teachers’ acceptanceof the use of gamified educational systems. We conducted aquantitative study following the TAM [15].Following the general TAM’s theory proposed by Davis[15], initially, we define the external variables that shouldrelate to perceived ease of use. In our study, we investigated ifprevious experience with i) educational technology, ii) distanceeducation and iii) gamification affected perceived ease-of-use.For the rest, we follow the original hypothesis structureproposed by Davis [15], thus investigating if perceived ease-of-use affected perceived usefulness and attitude toward using;perceived usefulness affected attitude toward using and attitudetoward using; attitude toward using affected behavioral inten-tion to use; and behavioral intention to use affected actualsystem usage.A. Materials and methodTo provide teachers with a real experience with a gamifiededucational environment, we adopted the system Eagle-edu1.The gamification design of the educational system is composedof 21 gamification elements and organized in five dimensions(i.e., performance/measurement, ecological, social, personal,and fictional gamification), as defined by Toda et al. [16],[17]. The system can be personalized in different ways. Inthis study, we used the system without any personalization(i.e., using all gamification elements available). The systemwas chosen by convenience.To analyze our hypothesis, we used the TAM, a modelderived from the psychology-based theory of reasoned actionand theory of planned behavior, proposed by Davis [15]. Wechose TAM because it is a dominant model in investigatingfactors affecting users’ acceptance of the technology [18].The TAM presumes a mediating role of two variables calledperceived ease of use and perceived usefulness in a complexrelationship between system characteristics (external variables)and potential system usage [18], [19]. TAM is composed of19 assertive questions. In addition, in our survey, we addedsix demographic questions (i) gender, ii) age, iii) degree,iv) experience with gamification, v) experience with distanceeducation, and vi) experience with educational technologies).We also measured the users’ system usage time. Also, basedon examples from recent studies [20]–[22], we also includedan “attention-check” statement (i.e., “This is an attention-check question, if you have read this question, check option2”) to verify whether participants were paying attention whenanswering TAM questions. Responses from participants whomistake the “attention check” statement were excluded fromthe analysis.To perform the analyses, we used the software Smart-PLS2, which is a software with a graphical user interfacefor structural equation modeling (SEM) using the partial leastsquares (PLS) path modeling method [23]. In this study, weused SmartPLS software under a license provided by TampereUniversity.The study was organized in three steps. In the first step,participants answered the study’s demographic questions. In1https://eagle-edu.com.br/2https://www.smartpls.com/the second step, participants were asked to use the gamifiededucational system (i.e., the system Eagle-edu) for at least 30minutes. To make the participants have a real experience usinga gamified system, the participants used the normal version ofthe system (i.e., without any additional resources). In the thirdstep, immediately after finishing using the system, participantswere directed to the form where they could answer TAM.B. Participants and data analysisOur sample is composed exclusively of Brazilian BasicEducation teachers. We received 43 responses from teachersworking in different regions of the country. The participationof teachers in the study was free and voluntary. The study wasdisseminated and was available on the Internet through GoogleForms. The participants in the research were predominantlyfemale (32 self-declared females and 11 self-declared partici-pants). Regarding the predominant area of background, mostrespondents are professionals working in the field of ExactSciences (16 participants). Also, 11 participants are from areasrelated to Social Sciences and Humanities. 19 participantswork predominantly in Basic Education.To analyze the data, we used partial least squares struc-tural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) [24], which is a well-established method for structural equation modeling, allow-ing estimation of cause-effect relationships between latentvariables [24], [25]. PLS-SEM is also capable of producingreliable estimates, even analyzing data from a small samplesize [26]. Despite this, our sample does not allow us to detectthe effect, and, therefore, our results should not be generalizedto other cases [26].III. RESULTSInitially, given that PLS-SEM is non-parametric in nature[24], no need to analyze data distribution. To test the adequacyof the data regarding the instrument used in the research, weanalyzed the reliability results for the TAM. All dimensionsof the model showed highly adequate results (i.e., Cronbach’sAlpha ≥ .700; Jöreskog’s rho ≥ .700, Composite Reliability≥ .700, and Average Variance Extracted ≥ .500 [27]). Table Ipresent the reliability results.TABLE IRELIABILITY RESULTS FOR THE TECHNOLOGY ACCEPTANCE MODELα RHO A CR AVEATU .950 .951 .964 .869BIU .925 .925 .952 .869PEU .949 .949 .959 .797PU .967 .968 .974 .860Key: α: Cronbach’s Alpha; RHO A:Jöreskog’s rho; CR: Composite Reli-ability; AVE: Average Variance Ex-tracted; ATU: Attitude toward using;BIU: Behavioral intention to use; PEU:Perceived ease-of-use; PU: Perceivedusefulness.To analyze our hypothesis, the relationships proposed in themodel were analyzed using the PLS-SEM. The results indicatethat experience with distance education (β = .367 | p = .018)and gamification (β = .473 | p = .001) positively affectedperceived ease of use. However, experience with educationaltechnology did not significantly affect perceived ease of use(β = .225 | p = .111). At the same time, as expected by TAM,attitude toward using positively affected behavioral intentionto use (β = .691 | p = .000). Behavioral intention to use haspositively affected current system usage (β = .440 | p = .001).Perceived ease of use positively affected perceived usefulness(β = .927 | p = .000). Perceived usefulness positively affectedattitude toward using (β = .645 | p = .000). Table II presentthe path model.TABLE IIPATH MODELCIβ P Values 2.5% 97.5%ATU → BIU .691*** .000 .438 1.012BIU → ASU .440*** .001 .069 .638EDE → PEU .367** .018 .067 .600EET → PEU .255 .111 -.086 .481EG → PEU .473*** .001 .211 .700PEU → ATU .279 .129 -.162 .700PEU → PU .927*** .000 .803 .977PU → ATU .645*** .000 .231 1.061PU → BIU .274 .114 -.062 .563Key: ** p≤.05; *** p≤.01. The statistically significantassociations are in bold. β: Regression Coefficient;CI: Confidence interval (bias-corrected); ATU: Attitudetoward using; BIU: Behavioral intention to use; ASU:Actual system usage; EDE: Experience with distanceeducation; PEU: Perceived ease-of-use; EET: Experi-ence with educational technology; EG: Experience withgamification; PU: Perceived usefulness.IV. CONCLUDING REMARKSIn this paper, we presented the results of a study to analyzeteachers’ perceptions regarding gamification in the educationalcontext. The results demonstrate that experience with distanceeducation and gamification positively affected the ease ofuse of gamification. In future studies, we aim to analyzethe moderating effects of the acceptance of gamification byteachers.REFERENCES[1] J. Koivisto and J. Hamari, “The rise of motivational information systems:A review of gamification research,” International Journal of InformationManagement, vol. 45, pp. 191–210, 2019.[2] J. Hamari, Gamification. 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An Early Case Study Analyzing Teachers' Acceptance Towards of the Use of Gameful Approaches in Education in Brazil

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An Early Case Study Analyzing Teachers' Acceptance Towards of the Use of Gameful Approaches in Education in Brazil

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