Sep
2018
gamification and learning
Student Perceptions of Learning and Instructional Effectiveness in College Courses
https://www.ets.org/Media/Products/perceptions.pdf
Students’ Perception of Gamification in Learning and Education.
https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007%2F978-3-319-47283-6_6
College students’ perceptions of pleasure in learning – Designing gameful gamification in education
investigate behavioral and psychological metrics that could affect learner perceptions of technology
today’s learners spend extensive time and effort posting and commenting in social media and playing video games
Creating pleasurable learning experiences for learners can improve learner engagement.
uses game-design elements in non-gaming environments with the purpose of motivating users to behave in a certain direction (Deterding et al., 2011)
How can we facilitate the gamefulness of gamification?
Most gamified activities include three basic parts: “goal-focused activity, reward mechanisms, and progress tracking” (Glover, 2013, p. 2000).
gamification works similarly to the instructional methods in education – clear learning and teaching objectives, meaningful learning activities, and assessment methods that are aligned with the objectives
the design of seven game elements:
- Storytelling: It provides the rules of the gamified activities. A good gamified activity should have a clear and simple storyboard to direct learners to achieve the goals. This game-design element works like the guidelines and directions of an instructional activity in class.
- Levels: A gamified activity usually consists of different levels for learners to advance through. At each level, learners will face different challenges. These levels and challenges can be viewed as the specific learning objectives/competencies for learners to accomplish.
- Points: Points pertain to the progress-tracking element because learners can gain points when they complete the quests.
- Leaderboard: This element provides a reward mechanism that shows which learners are leading in the gamified activities. This element is very controversial when gamification is used in educational contexts because some empirical evidence shows that a leaderboard is effective only for users who are aggressive and hardcore players (Hamari, Koivisto, & Sarsa, 2014).
- Badges: These serve as milestones to resemble the rewards that learners have achieved when they complete certain quests. This element works as the extrinsic motivation for learners (Kapp, 2012).
- Feedback: A well-designed gamification interface should provide learners with timely feedback in order to help them to stay on the right track.
- Progress: A progress-tracking bar should appear in the learner profile to remind learners of how many quests remain and how many quests they have completed.
Dominguez et al. (2013) suggested that gamification fosters high-order thinking, such as problem-solving skills, rather than factual knowledge. Critical thinking, which is commonly assessed in social science majors, is also a form of higher-order thinking.
Davis (1989) developed technology acceptance model (TAM) to help people understand how users perceive technologies. Pleasure, arousal, and dominance (PAD) emotional-state model that developed by Mehrabian (1995) is one of the fundamental design frameworks for scale development in understanding user perceptions of user-system interactions.
Van der Heijdedn (2004) asserted that pleasurable experiences encouraged users to use the system for a longer period of time
Self-determination theory (Deci & Ryan, 1985) has been integrated into the design of gamification and addressed the balance between learners’ extrinsic and intrinsic motivation.
Storytelling in the subscale of Preferences for Instruction emphasizes the rules of the gamified learning environments, such as the syllabus of the course, the rubrics for the assignments, and the directions for tasks. Storytelling in the subscale of Preferences for Instructors’ Teaching Style focuses on the ways in which instructors present the content. For example, instructors could use multimedia resources to present their instructional materials. Storytelling in the subscale of Preferences for Learning Effectiveness emphasizes scaffolding materials for the learners, such as providing background information for newly introduced topics.
The effective use of badges would include three main elements: signifier, completion logic, and rewards (Hamari & Eranti, 2011). A useful badge needs clear goal-setting and prompt feedback. Therefore, badges correlate closely with the design of storytelling (rules) and feedback, which are the key game design elements in the subscale of Preferences for Instruction.
Students can use Google to search on their laptops or tablets in class when instructors introduce new concepts. By reading the reviews and viewing the numbers of “thumbs-up” (agreements by other users), students are able to select the best answers. Today’s learners also “tweet” on social media to share educational videos and news with their classmates and instructors. Well-designed gamified learning environments could increase pleasure in learning by allowing students to use familiar computing experiences in learning environments.