Gamification in a Social Learning Environment

Abstract

Gamification has gained traction in recent years as an effective way of engaging users to perform actions in contexts that would otherwise be considered tedious and undesirable. Education is an area in which user engagement could have the greatest impact on success, with some advantages for students being improved grades or better comprehension. The authors of this paper have designed and implemented a three part system for gamifying a social learning environment designed for use in higher educ ation lecture classrooms. Our goal in doing so is to foster greater user engagement from the students using the system and thereby promote an environment better suited for active learning.

Gamification: The effect on student motivation and performance at the post-secondary level

“…Issues and Trends in Educational Technology Volume 3, Number 2, Dec. 2015 One solution to overcome the challenges associated with incorporating commercially available computer games into the classroom may be the use of gamification (Muntean, 2011). Gamification involves selecting elements of games, and using these to create a game-like environment in a non-game context (Deterding et al, 2011;de-Marcos et al, 2014;Dominguez et al, 2013;Giannetto, Chao, & Fontana, 2013;Goehle, 2013;Hanus & Fox, 2015;Mekler et al, 2013b;Muntean, 2011;O'Donnell et al, 2013;Prince, 2013;Pedreira et al, 2014;Turner, Dieksheide, & Anderson, 2013;Watson, Hancock, & Mandryk, 2013) to increase user experience and engagement (Apostol, Zaharescu, & Alexe, 2013;Dominguez et al, 2013;Pedreira et al, 2014;Turner et al, 2013). "Gamification desires to combine intrinsic motivation with an extrinsic one in order to raise motivation and engagement" (Montean, 2011, p. 326).…”

Report of the 2013-2014 Academic Affairs Committee

“…20 Serious educational games provide the opportunity for students to learn at their own pace by creating an environment that actively encourages peers to teach and learn from each other. In addition, the use of games improves traditional educational methods by encouraging students to keep trying even when they lose, and to continue practice until they have mastered the content.…”

“…In addition, the use of games improves traditional educational methods by encouraging students to keep trying even when they lose, and to continue practice until they have mastered the content. 20 Games can be designed to utilize characteristics of cognitive stimulation, motivation, constant assessment, and the encouragement of a system style of thinking. A well-designed game motivates the player in a goal-oriented method using a carefully calibrated balance of rewards, challenges, and chance.…”

Foundation of Digital Badges and Micro-Credentials

“…From an educational perspective, those benefi ts have been most often described and explained from the often overlapping perspectives of assessment, motivation, and credentials. From the assessment viewpoint, badges can provide a means for those within formal, as well as informal, learning environments to list the needed competencies to achieve a specifi c skill or level of knowledge and also the standards by which performance will be compared; to offer corrective feedback on learner performances; and to indicate clearly when a specifi c level of mastery has been achieved (Bloom, 1971 ;Guskey, 2007 From an intrinsic motivational perspective, the structure and sequence of badges can offer users an effective way to capture and review potential learning paths while potentially increasing desires for continued or additional learning Randall, Harrison, & West, 2013 ), to set goals , to build confi dence in personal performances (Keller, 2010 ), and to foster a sense of accomplishment (Giannetto, Chao, & Fontana, 2013 ). Badges may also motivate users from a more extrinsic perspective by increasing their effort invested in a task in order to receive a tangible reward or status symbol of personal accomplishments that can be shown and compared to the performances of others .…”