There are, I imagine, many ways gamification may be used in higher education. From the perspective that we manage learning environments, there can be some classes which benefit from certain types of gamification. We have a class where students spend most of their time constructing, testing, and redesigning open source 3D printers. The work they do is chunked into tasks with a lot of tasks to choose from. Lee Sheldon's XP system based on Warcraft has proven ideal for assessment.

Professor Lee Sheldon, of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, found that class participation, attendance, and grades improved when he switched from a percentage style grading system - where a student begins the semester with 100 percent and loses points from there - to one styled like a role playing game (RPG) where a student begins at level one with 0 experience points (XP) and earns cumulative XP throughout the semester in order to “level-up” their grade. Like many modern multiplayer games, our class included achievements with small rewards for notable achievements and incremental progress, as well as missions; previously defined or student-proposed projects worth agreed-upon set amounts of XP. You may find an early account here, http://www.scribd.com/doc/81328515/Self-Replicating-Open-Source-Rapid-Prototyping-In-the-Engineering-Classroom

Theoretically, any motivational concept can work one way or another in most situations. Higher education and even research level are no exception. The RG Score here is really making use of gamification.

The interesting thing in gamification is that it's not the tangible reward that counts. It's just the recognition of getting ahead in the field. So I see the key element in implementation is in stirring up the competition. Your proposal is a very interesting one indeed.

I agree with your point that any motivational concept would work just fine, but I'm really interested in trying to motivate students to spend at least a little bit of time more then they usually do on learning subjects that are not as popular as others.

You don't happen to know of any example where avatar (or any other kind of virtual character) gamification model is used?

RG score does look like it, but I wouldn't treat it as a game high score or game scoring mechanism. You don't get any in-game or in-web-portal edge or advantage by having a higher score. No secret sections or options to explore, no special profile page customization etc. Just the score.

I have very little experience in gamification but have toyed with the idea for a while. I have come across examples in the workplace but not in general education.

I don't know if this link would be useful (http://www.gamifyingeducation.org/) or perhaps you are a member already. If possible, please update me on your project development.

I have reviewed information provided on this website. I'm not a member. I did try to register, but the Word Press registration form on that website is closed, so I couldn't make an account. But regardless, all content is public, so there was no need to register a member account.

There are a few interesting short papers on the concept and implementation, but they deal in general terms, not in describing real practical implementations etc.

I would still like to hear someone's thoughts and ideas on how my idea for an implementation could be corrected and made better.

Thank you so far for showing interest.

How do you get around the fact that this is a fad in many ways. Also gamification provides a false sense of achievement. I think it is a great to gather information on your students but I still think this is engaging the student towards a pavlovian response that if not correctly applied may encourage unintended behaviour.

Why must we encourage a constant reward and automatic response generation. I have some doubts about this whole process. I am open to applying new techniques but gamification! I would definately need some convincing first.

IT is a fact that students are getting very hard to motivate in this age and time.

What other motivational concept would you suggest if not gamification of learning processes?

I know Milan, this is a difficult one. The whole process somewhat relies on personal relevance. How do you connect a person to a subject? Once someone can identify with a subject and it becomes personally relevant motivation becomes secondary. The question should be how do I make my subject personally relevant for my students. Maybe I am just too old fashioned?

That is a good point, but there are some subjects that students simply don't like or don't see the point of it right away, because they don't know how the development of business software is done, and my courses are tightly stuffed with a lot of subjects so I cannot afford to take up the time needed to give them real life examples and to show them real project development based on documentation, and teach them how to read the documentation, diagrams, UML etc. Those are subjects of a different course and that course is somewhat cursory in explaining and teaching students the real purpose of documenting and using diagram to describe processes etc.

I need a concept that will motivate them to take up time outside of classes, for example homework to have them deal with learning at least a little bit about those techniques and acquiring more knowledge on those subjects. Regular homework just won't work, because I cannot be mandatory (not unless it concerns a subject of my course, and even then making it a mandatory part of the course's pre-exam point system is difficult, because it is not in line with the course programme)... that is why I need an alternative motivational concept.

I agree with most aspects of what the above contributors have highlighted. However, I must warn that competition between subjects can sometimes lead to Extrinsic motivation and not Intrinsic motivation, which should be the main objective of any gamified system. One should focus on improving its own characteristics in a path to mastery, and not on social statement of power/ability.

Nevertheless, i find the project very interesting and i would like to replicate your approach at Universidade Lusófona, in Lisbon. If you are interested in a collaboration, feel free to contact me.

This is an interesting observation. Still, I don't intend to use the scoring system to state that someone has more ability then others, but rather that the person has been more diligent regarding activity completion on the course at hand.

I will surely share my findings, results, observations, comments etc. regarding an attempt. Before that, I need to be clear on what I will implement of all possible motivational solutions that belong to gamification concepts in order to be allowed to conduct such an "experiment". This is why I ask for information from those who might have experience in order to make this a really objective testing and not something that will end with results I wanted to see.

Latter on, I will step into methodological problematic, but currently I just need to collect possible existing and suggested solutions.

Hi all,

What we're doing here in Valencia is to carry out a telematic simulation where different teams from different universities around the globe interact with each other in real time or by posting comments and e-mails. They negotiate, make decisions at the time they develop interpersonal skills. Very worth- trying! Find info. at http://www.icons.umd.edu/

Asides of joint effort in sharing information and research in those discussions, do you implement any kind of motivational concept such as gamification or any get-a-reward concept in this collaboration?

Yes, Mark, gamification is a bit of a fad but that’s part of the point. I see its main use in presenting learning material in an appealing format to the students; and people nowadays like games. I would agree that intrinsic is better than extrinsic motivation. Getting somebody interested, besides competitiveness, is a key factor in intrinsic motivation. I also agree that rewards have to be used judiciously to avoid adverse effects, rewards in the form of recognition such as avatars should be OK.

Of course, there can be down downsides as Diogo pointed out. Competition can demotivate students who achieve lower scores/status. However, from observing people playing multi-level games such as Candy Crush, most people just want to improve and get to the next level rather than being top players. People just want to be in the in-group.

So back to Milan’s original question on implementation, I have a rather simplistic view. Perhaps the key is to make it a fad and here we probably have to consult app designers on game psychology.

Hi Milan

If you haven't already, it may be worth following Stephen Yang @syangman on Twitter. Also, please see the links below which may be of help to you.

Kind regards

Mike

Exergame and fitness video game researcher. http://exergamelab.org http://rockstarpe.org http://about.me/exergamelab

Cortland, NY • http://www.exergamelab.org

... 'Why must we encourage a constant reward and automatic response generation. I have some doubts about this whole process. I am open to applying new techniques but gamification! '

Below this comment you will find a pair of arrows with 'Interesting answer? Vote to promote quality contributions'. Please hit the green arrow to 'appreciate' (sic. Like) as this will increase my RG score and also show how a facet of 'gamification' is used in 'serious' applications ;-) It is also interesting that 'Follow' and 'Friend' begin with the same letter ....

I think there are bits of this technology that have great potential, and others that will probably stay in 'Academiaville' .... oh, sorry, the 'Virtual Learning Environment' !

I am not sure if there is any conflict between the humour of ludic trends and a 'quality answer', but I hope you might see how the two things can rub along together :-)

Dear Mr Smith,

I have reviewed and tested a similar app called Healthy Heroes. It implements gamification concepts to motivate people to exercise and for every completed training they get points to allocate to their avatar's strength, speed, dexterity etc. I will look up Mr Yang's tweets. Thank you.

- - - -

Dear Mr Rowe,

That is exactly the point. Even serious systems have to rely on some sort of motivational concept to keep users interested and coming back to interact and contribute. Education is an important and serious institution and an important and serious system, so what you have illustrated is the reason why I would like to try implementing gamification as a kind of a motivational concept.

- - - -

Still, any other suggestions, pointers or examples would be very welcome.

Thank you so far. This topic has been very helpful to me.

Hi

It seems like we need a definition of 'Gamification' otherwise there can be too much emphasis on extrinsic motivation (to win) particularly where computer based games are used. However, in education we have known for a long time that intrinsic motivation drives deep learning. So the question is not if Gamification is any good or not, but how can use games to encourage intrinsic motivation. In sport we all know that if you involve the athlete in the design of their training programme, that they are more likely to adhere to it (intrinsically motivated) and this is no different for student's. One example, is getting students to design their own board game in the context of the subject that they are studying. Please see the link below for an example.

http://www.commonsensemedia.org/educators/blog/teachers-students-design-your-own-stem-learning-game

Here is an example of a pretty large and long experiment on gamification although not in education context:

Hamari, J. (2013). Transforming Homo Economicus into Homo Ludens: A Field Experiment on Gamification in a Utilitarian Peer-To-Peer Trading Service. Electronic Commerce Research and Applications, 12. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.elerap.2013.01.004

The experiment you described seems rather complex in the sense that it might be extremely difficult to control from where the actual effect comes from since you have multiple mechanics in the works at the same time.

Gamification's main purpose, in my eyes, is bridging engagement gaps where they exist. In higher education, students are often highly motivated to engage with the information on a topic they study but get frustrated with problems, many of them organizational, in obtaining and cataloguing that information. In my opinion, resources allocated to the gamification of higher education should be used to improve the learning environment in general, not adding a PBL gamification approach.

Gamification is a great tool for the right challenges, but higher education is not one of them.

That surely is one big challenge, however this is for informatics and computing students and games are something they are involved in everyday. My idea is to allow them some in game development (programming, scripting, coding) as well. Not only to reward them with imaginary points, gold etc.

I've developed a similar portal for my research where I'm looking at using gamification to encourage student engagement through a gamified discussion board similar to stackoverflow. The idea is to encourage students to ask questions and to help each other by answering these questions. Students are able to gain points from asking and answering questions and they able to vote on questions asked and answers given by their peers. They also able to 'level up' as well as earn badges for their actions. What's interesting for me though is that there is both competition and cooperation at play since there is a leaderboard that shows the top students but at the same time you can only gain points through asking for help and helping others. I do however believe that this dynamic of competition and cooperation is something that occurs naturally in most classrooms. I believe it's human nature to compete with one another as it's human nature to try and help one another (I hope). At the same time I must stress that I'm not starting this research with any preconceived ideas around gamification in higher education and that I'm merely exploring the paradigm and looking at the results. I haven't as yet implemented the discussion board as I'm still doing my literature review and developing my research questions, but I'd be interested to get some feedback from others as to what they think.

Dear Mr. Abrahams,

when examining various game elements from a psychological perspective, I found leaderboards to have potentially harmful effects on motivation. Social comparison is a complex process with a variety of possible effects on motivation, not all of them beneficial. A good overview on theories of social comparison and its effect on motivation can be found here: Lockwood, P., & Pinkus, R. T. (2008). The impact of social comparisons on motivation. Handbook of motivation science, 251‐264.

Dear Simon

I agree with you comments " students are often highly motivated to engage with the information on a topic they study but get frustrated with problems, many of them organizational, in obtaining and cataloguing that information ".

Data Attendance and Achievement in Problem-based Learning: The Va...

Sorry Simon... to add, this is why we included scaffolding in to the PBL process to address the issues that you raised. Please see the attached article in my previous message.

Dear Mike,

I'm sorry, it seems there has been a misunderstanding. By PBL I meant not problem-based learning, but "Points, Badges, Leaderboards", an approach to gamification that focuses on those elements, mainly providing feedback for the player and eschewing more complex elements that are nonetheless important for games like narrative and meaningful choices. This just goes to show the dangers inherent to abbreviations.

Hi all,

we have done some work in the area, mostly following the approach to use game design patterns and map them to effects on learning.

for Example:

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/234833877_Effects_of_Game_Design_Patterns_on_Basic_Life_Support_Training_Content?ev=prf_pub

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/235265707_Effects_of_mobile_gaming_patterns_on_learning_outcomes_a_literature_review?ev=prf_pub

might be interested to have a look.

Basically in both cases we tried to modify classical courseware with some gamification patterns, as badges, scores, timer and so on. All the gamification approaches are based on game design patterns by Björk and Holopainen.

Article Effects of Game Design Patterns on Basic Life Support Training Content

Article Effects of mobile gaming patterns on learning outcomes: A li...

Hi Simon

Sorry for the misunderstanding and thanks for your kind response.

@Ashraf Abrahams: Do you have some conceptual drafts that you could post here regarding your plan of implementation? Or just some drafts planing the course having gamification concept implemented in the process?

@Marcus Specht: Thank you for these references. I see they are in form of reviews of the changes you've made to the course. Could you just express your findings in regard to the question:

Are you satisfied with the effect of these changes in the course organization when it comes to overall improvement of students' knowledge at the end of the course?

There are, I imagine, many ways gamification may be used in higher education. From the perspective that we manage learning environments, there can be some classes which benefit from certain types of gamification. We have a class where students spend most of their time constructing, testing, and redesigning open source 3D printers. The work they do is chunked into tasks with a lot of tasks to choose from. Lee Sheldon's XP system based on Warcraft has proven ideal for assessment.

Professor Lee Sheldon, of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, found that class participation, attendance, and grades improved when he switched from a percentage style grading system - where a student begins the semester with 100 percent and loses points from there - to one styled like a role playing game (RPG) where a student begins at level one with 0 experience points (XP) and earns cumulative XP throughout the semester in order to “level-up” their grade. Like many modern multiplayer games, our class included achievements with small rewards for notable achievements and incremental progress, as well as missions; previously defined or student-proposed projects worth agreed-upon set amounts of XP. You may find an early account here, http://www.scribd.com/doc/81328515/Self-Replicating-Open-Source-Rapid-Prototyping-In-the-Engineering-Classroom

This sounds like an interesting implementation. I will review his report. Thank you for suggesting it.

Hi Richard/Milan

Thanks for your message, Ill have a look too. Today I found an interesting 2013 article that you might find interesting.

Thank you Mike. I will read it.

Thank you Mike. I have it.

There's a talk I gave recently here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FQ6EMzfThPM

I recommend watching Robin Turner's YouTube video. I neither play games nor usually watch videos, but this is a consistently interesting introduction to games and gamification. It is very well done.

Dear Milan,

Have a look at JISC (http://www.jisc.ac.uk/) and ALT (http://www.alt.ac.uk/) here in the UK that do much work in this field; especially have a look at this report:

http://www.jisc.ac.uk/media/documents/programmes/elearningpedagogy/JISC%20talk%20March%202011%20Michael%20Callaghan%20University%20of%20Ulster.pdf

Also many HEIs in the UK now have research groups focusing on bridging gaming and education! However, I've yet to see an article that robustly presents data promoting new technologies, in general; does any one know of such an article (I know of Hattie's excellent meta analysis of various pedagogic reviews!)?

Thank you Angus, I'll review these documents and reports.

Hello everybody.

Got a little busy recently so I couldn't comment. Must say there's some interesting work being done around this topic and I really enjoyed Robin Turner's video to the extent I had to up-vote it (is up-vote a real word?).

@Milan Tair. At the moment I do not have anything concrete in place around how I'm going to implement my study. Most likely, I'll just make the portal available, put assignments up and analyse how students use the system using something like activity theory. How about your study? It seems like something similar to what I'm looking to do. Do you have any plans on how you going to be implementing it?

Also, from the comments made, I'm beginning to believe that possibly different game elements could have different motivational results on different people, so for example, throughout my school and university career, I've always worked extra hard to get to the top or at least near the top of the leader-board, so although I can certainly see why leader-boards might be demotivating, I'm really interested in knowing why this is the case for some and not for others. Also, does this hold true in the context of what we are trying to do? As Robin Turner mentions in his video, if students are playing for the sake of the game and if the points they score do not affect their class grades, then how demotivating (or motivating) will a leader-board be in the context of the game? Again, I certainly do not know the answers and I'm really just looking to explore what happens.

I'm still reviewing a few approaches. Most probably, I will go with the approach where every "player" (student) will be given points in the beginning and will be trusted to keep up as many as he/she possibly can during the class. Every lecture would be followed by home works, thesis, programming projects etc. and every one of these activities for a lecture will be worth a number of points. The student must complete these tasks in order to keep his given points from falling. If one of these activities is not completed (submitted for review), the student will automatically have points taken from his initial 100 total and he/she will not be able to retrieve them again.

I'm thinking of making these 100 points equivalent to 30% of the score. At my University, we implement the Bologna process and very students gets marks for certain activities: 10% of the score is for attending lectures, 2x30% is for colloquium tests and the last 30% is what students earn on the exam. In Serbia, University level marks are 6-10 (6 being the lowest passing score and 10 being the highest). The thresholds for each mark is as follows: 51% for 6, 61% for 7... 91% and higher is 10.

Since there are two colloquiums, each can earn a student up to 30% of the score (while the student must have at least 51% on each test to pass), the first is topically a theoretical test, while the second test is a practical. The exam is a different story all together.

My classes are practical (programming), so I was thinking of turning the first colloquium from a test into this gamified approach of motivating students to do the aforementioned activities and "keep" points, instead of "acquiring" them. Some students have an impression that even if they miss a deadline and don't submit the project in time that they will be able to do it later on or to somehow make up for it on the final exam etc. However, they never are, at least not with my help, I intend to make this approach automated (as a web portal) and they will know (they and everyone else) that they have lost those points for good and that some of those total 30% of the score are non-recoverable for them.

I hope that this might motivate them not to slack off and to work harder and regularly submit home works, projects etc.

I like Ashraf's comments. You have different types of games, different types of students, and different types of learning objectives. So we need to be diverse and flexible in the design of learning environments.

Johnson and Johnson long ago described learning environments in three ways. There are traditional, competitive, zero-sum environments with winners and losers that are demotivating for all but the winners, as Ashraf notes. Then there are collaborative environments that are win-win with both the group and the individual winning together, but where very highest performers are at risk of not getting the very highest grades. Finally, you get learning alone where individuals control their learning environment - this ends up as competitive in overall grades but not in task by task, face to face, competition. Then you have to decide if the grading curve is preordained (fixed), or whether all the class can get As and Bs if their work is good enough. I find this promise is motivational for the students and it takes the sting out of the competitive environment. This can be viewed as competency based education where all the students can succeed if they attain the desired standards.

However, we have a mandate not only to certify the attainment of skills that will give us competent and safe technology, but that also will sort by merit (or some other criterion that sorts) to allow tracking the students for future classes and careers. I am lukewarm, at best, about this mandate that erodes freedoms, predicts future performance modestly, and creates a very inefficient educational system with reject rates that would be unthinkable in industry. And in industry they engage in a great deal of education and training with very low reject rates. [This sorting norm also creates the situation where our worst students absorb most of our time, and does not with peer learning.]

I agree with Johnson and Johnson that most educational objectives may be best learned with a mix of collaborative and individual learning modes. The latter ensures a grading curve. Games, they say, may be used for making the necessary but boring activities more fun. And I think gamification is showing many new ways games may be used in collaborative activities.

But, above all, we teach the the next test or task. Whereas the real value of any class is what is still remembered one year, or five years, later. Active learning, autonomous learning, collaborative learning, and yes gamification, are the motivational environments that give us good outcomes in the future. For example, I use autonomous learning for blogging about design. The student writing is, anecdotally but unmistakably, far better than that in prescribed assignments such as reports. A study at Penn State, where I work, recently go found that such blogging is associated with higher grades in subsequent classes. I believe that. And I believe that they will communicate for making a living and for making a life.

I think we need to bring the future back into the discussion and also give more value to the power of motivation in learning. The neuropsychologists now tell us all is emotion. Perhaps we should listen.

Hello everyone

Yes, I've managed to watch Robin's YouTube video and I agree it is very interesting and informative.

Also, I have just had a very quick look at this link which has lots of resouces, so please have a look and let us know if you find it useful?

http://theknowledgeguru.com/100-great-game-based-learning-and-gamification-resources/

I like how he introduced routes around minute 40, where he explained routes in games as choices in chess and not as a pre-set and pre-defined routes (scenarios) in video games.

This is important to note for education. We should not give a pre-set number of "choices" from which students can chose, but instead to create a learning environment in that "gamified" system of learning where choosing a route to solve a problem comes naturally as a part of solving a problem, but in that shows us how a particular student thinks and towards which fields, in practice, that particular student has most interest.

Really, that was a very good video.

Part of the problem with "skinning" your course as a game (i.e. avatars, narrative) is that unless you have 100% buy-in from all of your students, you will like DE-motivate as many as you motivate.

Most of the really useful aspects of gamification aren't new, but there are a few things - choice, multiple paths through the course, additive scoring - that, when taken together constitute a new way of designing a course.

I would recommend against any system where students can actually lose points, and would encourage you to incorporate as much choice as possible.

I've been incorporating some of the things that people now call gamification in my programming courses for about 15 years, and have recently designed & delivered several gamified courses in education (grad level) and in an intro to computers course. In my latest course design players have a total of 60 quests they can complete - some required, others optional - all aligned to the course objectives. They need 1000 XP for 100% in the course, but the total possible points if they did everything is 1450.

I presented a paper on the design:

Katrin Becker, Patrick Perri (2013). Is Gamification a Game-Changer? Comparing Gamified and Non-Gamified Approaches presented at: Mount Royal University Centennial Symposium on Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Banff, Alberta, November 7 - 9, 2013

You can find the slides to this presentation on slideshare: http://www.slideshare.net/becker/is-gamification-a-game-changer

I have a chapter on gamification that will come out in an upcoming book published through the International Game Developers Association and I also taught a Master Class on gamification for the Canadian Association of Instructional Designers in November. They have asked me to do an encore presentation of this webinar which will probably run in early March.

Our work on achievement badges in higher education will be presented at SIGCSE this week: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/260488068_How_(Not)_to_Introduce_Badges_to_Online_Exercises?ev=prf_pub

There are also some other interesting gamification papers at SIGCSE and at least at the moment there is free access to all of the SIGCSE'14 papers through the conference program: https://www.openconf.org/sigcse2014/modules/request.php?module=oc_program&action=program.php&p=program

Conference Paper How (Not) to Introduce Badges to Online Exercises