Gamification has been widely employed in the educational domain over the past eight years when the term became a trend. However, the literature states that gamification still lacks formal definitions to support the design and analysis of gamified strategies. This paper analysed the game elements employed in gamified learning environments through a previously proposed and evaluated taxonomy while detailing and expanding this taxonomy. In the current paper, we describe our taxonomy in-depth as well as expand it. Our new structured results demonstrate an extension of the proposed taxonomy which results from this process, is divided into five dimensions, related to the learner and the learning environment. Our main contribution is the detailed taxonomy that can be used to design and evaluate gamification design in learning environments.
A gamificação tem sido bastante utilizada para aumentar o engajamento e amotivação dos estudantes em contextos educacionais, ampliando o interesse por parte de professores e instrutores. No entanto, há um consenso na literatura quanto a necessidade de abordagens sistemáticas (métodos, processos e/ou frameworks) para apoiar o planejamento da gamificação, de modo que os seus efeitos benéficos sejam alcançados. A literatura identifica alguns estudos internacionais focados em analisar estas abordagens sistemáticas, no entanto, há uma carência de estudos que relatem como o Brasil tem contribuído para o processo de planejamento da gamificação. Diante disso, esse artigo tem por objetivo apresentar um mapeamento sistemático da literatura, visando identificar as abordagens sistemáticas existentes para o planejamento da gamificação em escala nacional. A partir da condução desse mapeamento, foram encontrados 18 estudos onde foram identificados: (a) uma carência no apoio automatizado para o docente; (b) uma classificação dos tipos de personalização utilizados; e (c) a quantidade de elementos de gamificação utilizados. Por meio dos resultados obtidos, foi possível identificar ainda diversos desafios e oportunidades relacionados a esta área de pesquisa.
Gamification applies game elements in non-game contexts to improve users’ experience. One of the contexts that have mostly taken advantage of gamification is the educational one. However, the students’ experience is unique, since it varies according to their profile. Therefore, the individualities of each student must be considered to improve the students’ experience. This paper aims to explore the gamification properties and analyze the results of the user-centered application. For this, we proposed a framework focused on the user-centered gamification in the educational context, taking into account personal, functional, psychological, temporal, playful, implementable and evaluative properties. After applying the framework in the e-learning system, the controlled experiment with 139 students revealed an increase in students’ interaction, engagement and satisfaction. Thus, our main contributions are the improvement of the students’ experience with the user-centered gamification and the definition of a framework to assist in its application.
RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTS
This paper proposes a user-centered gamification framework for educational context It has been applied in an e-learning system and a controlled experiment was conducted A total of 139 students enrolled for an online course, and half of them used the gamified version Results indicate an increase in the students’ interaction, engagement and satisfaction
Personalization of gamification is an alternative to overcome the shortcomings of the one-size-fits-all approach, but the few empirical studies analyzing its effects do not provide conclusive results. While many user and contextual information affect gamified experiences, prior personalized gamification research focused on a single user characteristic/dimension. Therefore, we hypothesize if a multidimensional approach for personalized gamification, considering multiple (user and contextual) information, can improve user motivation when compared to the traditional implementation of gamification. In this paper, we test that hypothesis through a mixed-methods sequential explanatory study. First, 26 participants completed two assessments using one of the two gamification designs and self-reported their motivations through the Situational Motivation Scale. Then, we conducted semi-structured interviews to understand learners' subjective experiences during these assessments. As result, the students using the personalized design were more motivated than those using the one-size-fits-all approach regarding intrinsic motivation and identified regulation. Furthermore, we found the personalized design featured game elements suitable to users' preferences, being perceived as motivating and need-supporting. Thus, informing i) practitioners on the use of a strategy for personalizing gamified educational systems that is likely to improve students' motivations, compared to OSFA gamification, and ii) researchers on the potential of multidimensional personalization to improve single-dimension strategies. For transparency, dataset and analysis procedures are available at https://osf.io/grzhp.
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