An ontology for modelling user’ profiles and activities in gamified education

Abstract

Gamification studies in the educational domain usually focus on motivating students to increase their learning performance by enhancing their motivation. Classifications of behavioural profiles are often used for this (referred to as “gamer” or “user types”), which support the personalization of students’ experiences. These classifications consider these profiles from gamers’ or non-gamers’ points of view. However, within education research, it is necessary to broadly inspect these behavioural profiles to create an instructional design based on learners’ intrinsic drivers and motivations. The relationship between these concepts is subjective, complex, and difficult to categorize, demanding research to bridge this gap. Therefore, in this article we present the design and evaluation of an application ontology that seeks to represent relationships between Jung’s archetypes (e.g., the Hero, the Outlaw and others) adapted for educational purposes, creating a new approach for modelling user profiles, a taxonomy of game elements specific for use in educational contexts, and Bloom’s revised taxonomy to classify learning activities types. This ontology enables personalized and instructional designs directly related to the learning activity type for students. We demonstrate that the proposed ontology can help create better gamification designs to support learning, and we envision it to be used both to create unplugged gamification strategies and personalized gamified educational systems.

Motivation no Jutsu: Exploring the Power of Badge Aesthetics in Gamified Learning

“…Past re-search shows that gamification applied to education is especially challenging because it might lead to undesired behaviors that harm learning, such as gaming the system [Rodrigues et al 2022b]. Similarly, studies have discussed that the same design is unlikely to work for everyone [Palomino et al 2023, Tondello et al 2019. Thereby, while supporting the value of connecting game elements to users' feelings, we also expand the literature by demonstrating that this approach might also jeopardize learning and that exploring it based on a single brand does not fit all.…”

“…Most often, studies aiming to understand how gamification designs affect learning experiences are centered on the game elements each design features [Huang et al 2020, Bai et al 2020]. On the one hand, that focus is supported by research demonstrating that different people prefer and are motivated by distinct game elements (e.g., [Palomino et al 2023, Tondello et al 2019). On the other hand, the literature also shows that designing game elements so that they are visually appealing to users has the potential to improve their experiences.…”

Gamificação Narrativa para Engajamento e Personalização: Redefinindo a Experiência do Aprendizado Digital

“…Iniciamos com uma análise das teorias existentes e das práticas de gamificação na educação, a partir das quais extraímos conceitos fundamentais e relações (abordagem top-down). Em paralelo, conduzimos uma análise dos dados recolhidos dos usuários e especialistas para identificar elementos adicionais e relações práticas (abordagem bottom-up) [13].…”

Innovative Emerging Ontology-driven Frameworks: A Systematic Literature Review

“…Researchers [82] state a branch of the education domain called gamification studies is based on student motivation. Gamification studies are used to increase student learning performance through motivation enhancement.…”

“…Gamification studies are used to increase student learning performance through motivation enhancement. [82] describe the process as first classifying the behavioural profiles, that is "user types" and "gamer", used to personalize the student's experiences. Furthermore, it is important in education research to inspect the behavioural profiles broadly for the development of a design that is instructional based on the learner's motivation and essential drivers.…”