Adapting Competitiveness and Gamification to a Digital Platform for Foreign Language Learning

Abstract

Due to globalization growth, learning a second language is a necessity to develop in an increasingly demanding multicultural environment. However, at present we still find that some traditional methodologies are still being applied for teaching, which represents a problem for current students, also called digital natives, because these methodologies should adapt to this digital age of technology and knowledge. To solve this problem, a digital resource for foreign language learning was developed taking into account competitiveness and gamification as bases to motivate students and engage them into the course. The objective of this tool is to improve the processing of theoretical information obtained making use of a virtual environment which has competitive activities and gamification elements such as: obtaining medals for completing tasks, user's progress bar and ranking according to the scores obtained, so that students are motivated and improve their learning. This research seeks to analyze the effects of applying competitiveness and gamification in a virtual environment aimed at foreign language learning. It was found that 81.03% of students are more inclined to use gamified digital tools and also 82.76% of students feel more motivated to learn a second language using this methodology.

The Synthesis of a Model of Problem-Based Learning With the Gamification Concept to Enhance the Problem-Solving Skills for High Vocational Certificate

“…It is a set of activities and processes to solve problems by applying game processes in problem-solving. In applying game features and elements to attract the target audience into the problem-solving process, the goal is to participate in learning in a fun way [17,30]. The purpose is to change behavior and to use activities to build the learning of new skills or the use of innovation [18].…”

Viewing Gamification Design Limitations and Weaknesses through a Pandemic Lens

“…Poor motivation has been identified as a major opportunity for improvement in learner content retention-especially when learning occurs remotely [6,7,11,14]. Gamification's entertainment component has been proposed as one solution to this motivational challenge.…”

“…Motivation can be either extrinsic or intrinsic [7,14,15]. Reference [15] described intrinsic motivation as "learners enjoy the instruction for its own sake and take pleasure in the (instructional) activity" (p. 75).…”

A Personalized English Learning Material Recommendation System Based on Knowledge Graph

“…In terms of online platforms and mobile APPs, although there are massive learning resources available for students, two common problems often accompany online English learning, namely: (1) Lacking the professional guidance from teachers, students are often confused when facing such massive learning data; they might lose their learning interest and get lost by distractions, or even feel befuddled and bewildered with the knowledge they learnt; (2) Students are usually of different learning and comprehension ability levels; even for students in a same class, there are learning level hierarchies, and different students have different demands for knowledge learning. Existing online learning platforms mostly divide knowledge content based on students' grades, they generally unify and organize the knowledge without considering students' individual demands, which has resulted in issues such as insufficient learning materials for good students, while average and poor students never learn [3,4]. Therefore, in view of these two issues, how to achieve personalized recommendation of learning resources based on the characteristics of English knowledge and the individual demands of learners is a question worthy careful consideration.…”