Gamification

Gamify Authoring Learning Games, Sims, and Virtual Environments (LTEC 5240) at the University of North Texas

This course is exclusively offered in the Maymester, and it was a very strenuous endeavor. Over three weeks, there were two game designs and nine blog posts. The first of the games was a beginning-to-end game; which was a board game with start and finish points on the board. The second game was a digital game designed in Scratch. While scratch is easy enough to use, the short timeline led to a very stressful scenario. I spent a considerable amount of time working with my classmates to improve their game functionality. While collaboration is always encouraged in the forum, I gained little from the endeavor; except a “thank you” from both the student and the instructor. While it was genuinely a selfless act, it could have been incentivized with gamification. While I think an entire course should be gamified for maximum implication, I will focus on the gamification of the digital game design project.

Unfortunately, we lose access to course materials after a course is completed. So, I will have to describe my experience in LTEC 5240 from memory and the notes in my course blog. The gist of the assignment was to create a design document and then create the game. The design document described the game features, audience, and gameplay. This was the second and final assignment, and it took place mostly during the second week of the course. With such a short timeline and the professor being at a conference during the second week of class, student engagement and motivation was very low. However, it could have been kept high, even in the absence of the professor, through gamification. Encouraging students through gamification techniques will enhance engagement, motivation, enjoyment, and create a more productive learning experience (Bohyun, 2015). The gamification strategies that will be employed for this learning activity are some of the most popular and will be: points, boosters, levels, leaderboards, and badges.

Future work should go into expanding this endeavor across the entire course (and arguably all UNT LTEC courses). Especially at the doctoral level with the cohort model, gamified learning across the entire curriculum could bring the students together like never seen before. I think these other great gamification strategies could also be implemented at a higher level: PvP quiz battles, open badges, and cohort or program-wide leader boards.

Gamification Design

Here are several of the gamification strategies and rationals.

Points

Points are the lifeblood of any game. Points are how progress is measured, and how accomplishment is measured and felt.

Pints and levels are easily tracked in the user profile.

Strategies

Points would be immediately earned by accomplishing tasks:

• Complete readings required for the module and complete the quiz.
• Earn more points by competing in a PvP module quiz; the student that answers fastest wins the point.
• Bonus points for early assignment submissions:
  • An assignment turned-in on the due date would get 1 point.
  • An assignment turned-in one day before the due date would get 2 points.
  • An assignment turned-in two days before the due date would get 3 points and so on.
• Provide an acceptable answer to a question in the forum.
  • Additional points are awarded for well-liked answers.
  • Question askers can also earn points by asking well-liked questions.
• Provide reviews to student submissions.
  • Bonus points are awarded for well-liked reviews.
• Daily bonus points:
  • Given for liking at least five items; this will encourage social engagement.
  • Being active seven days in a row; this will get accelerated points the longer the streak lasts.

Rationale

• Providing immediate feedback, with points serving as that feedback, provides increased motivation (Bohyun, 2015).
• Points act as an external reward (Tsay, Kofinas, & Luo, 2018, p. 3).

Boosters

Boosters allow temporary or permanent boosts to the way the game is played. “Boosters allow people to play the game better; to power up their game-play. If you think about Super Mario’s star … you get to play the game with more power.” (Chou, 2019)

Strategies

Access to the Adobe Stock booster. This booster will grant premium access to Adobe Stock for usage with the project; this will be paid for by LTEC. The booster will be granted at level 4.

Rational

• Boosters make the desired actions more effective and efficient (Chou, 2019).
• Graphical elements are one of the two most significant game elements of game-based learning (Subhash & Cudney, 2018).

Levels

Points (also known as experience) will eventually lead to an increased level. As levels increase, the student experience will evolve and improve.

Strategies

Content (user interface) unlocking is a substantial achievement with measurable benefits.

Level 1

• Ability to see all course materials.
• Can start the tasks, or should I say quests?

All students start at this level.

Level 2

• Ability to search the course material.
• Ability to search discussion forums.
• Ability to like articles.

Level 3

• Ability to like discussion posts.
• Ability to emoticon articles.

Level 4

• Ability to emoticon discussion posts.
• Access to the Adobe Stock booster.

Level 5

• Ability to edit other user’s discussion posts to clean up content; all changes are moderated by the instructor or a higher level student.

Rationale

• Levels help trigger competition, cooperation, and progression (Kocadere & Çağlar, 2018).
• Levels are one of the two most significant game elements of game-based learning (Subhash & Cudney, 2018).
• Levels act as an external reward (Tsay, Kofinas, & Luo, 2018, p. 3).

Leaderboard

A leaderboard will help students ensure they are keeping pace with the other students in the class. Leaderboards should include an all-time, course, and assignment leaderboard. We will focus on the assignment’s leaderboard.

Strategies

All activities for the assignment will have points associated. While bonus points can be earned, the leaderboard is an excellent way for a student to see how he or she is pacing in comparison to his or her peers. The leaderboard will help drive motivation

Rationale

• Leaderboards acknowledge student achievement in relation to their peers (Tsay et al., 2018, p. 5,11).
• Review shows that leaderboards, et al., are important game elements (Subhash & Cudney, 2018, p. 205).
• Students routinely check the leaderboard and “calculate how to surpass people” on the leaderboard (Kocadere & Çağlar, 2018, p. 16).

Badges

Strategies

• Bandwagon strategies will be implemented with the like feature.
  • The first student to like something that goes viral (viral defined by the professor) will earn a bandwagon badge (which of course also comes with points).
• Being active late at night, one-time.
• Being active on the weekend, one-time.
• Ranked badges for the final project: gold, silver, and copper.

Rationale

• Badges act as an external reward (Tsay, Kofinas, & Luo, 2018, p. 3).
• While not all students are motivated by badges, some students are “driven to be the first to get a badge.” (Kocadere & Çağlar, 2018, p. 17) The system has to be designed to attract a wide audience.

Gamified Online Collaborative Learning

The gamification platform should be set up and maintained by Information Technology (IT) professionals. This section assumes that budgets have already been approved, IT has already been involved, and the platform is ready for use.

With at least several months of anticipation, the instructor should ensure the system is functioning and create a student profile to walk-through the assignment and learning activities. The instructor will act as a moderator and possibly a participant in the game.

Students will start at level 1 and will follow the quests and battles in the platform to walk-through the course work in the appropriate order. New quests (aka modules or instruction sets) will be unlocked as the student progresses through the assignment.

The Game Design Document and the game development will be done collaboratively, and points will be awarded equally to both students. However, individual progress through the modules and assessments are still graded individually even if collaboration is used; it is allowed and expected. Students will be guided through the Game Design Document with several quests and refreshers designed around the built-in arcade system.

Once the Game Design Document is approved by the professor, the game design portion of the assignment will commence. The final game design will be submitted in a forum for all students to see. Every student, not team, will be required to place three ranked (gold, silver, and copper) votes for the games developed by all of the other teams; they cannot rank their team. Gold is worth three points, silver is worth two points, and copper is worth one point. The total points will be summed and the ranked leaders will receive ranked badges depicting their placement in their profile. All students will receive the points awarded by the voting.

Gamification Platform

I initially thought about using Canvas for this purpose. While it certainly may be possible, it was not intuitive. I requested a test course on UNT’s Canvas, but I was not able to configure anything reasonably close to what I wanted.

I quickly found Accord LMS, but it felt like a cheaply made system. I wanted something that felt more like a game. I honestly considered custom development, but I knew that would not be a valid consideration for the scope of a single assignment. As I trogged on across the internet, I found myself at my wit’s end. Just when I thought that the ideal platform didn’t exist, I found myself outside a home…page. The home…page had laughter, music, and conversations. I could hear the rolling of dice and the sound of chips hitting the table. What form of home…page was this?

Turns out, I had stumbled upon Growth Engineering. Growth Engineering’s Academy LMS wass built entirely around gamification. Academy LMS has all of the gamification my heart desired and more:

• Points (Experience Points (XP)) (Bohyun, 2015; Kocadere & Çağlar, 2018; Subhash & Cudney, 2018; Tsay et al., 2018)
• Achievements (Boosters) (Bohyun, 2015; Kocadere & Çağlar, 2018; Subhash & Cudney, 2018; Tsay et al., 2018)
• Levels (Bohyun, 2015; Kocadere & Çağlar, 2018; Subhash & Cudney, 2018; Tsay et al., 2018)
• Leaderboards (Bohyun, 2015; Kocadere & Çağlar, 2018; Subhash & Cudney, 2018; Tsay et al., 2018)
• Custom Badges (Bohyun, 2015; Kocadere & Çağlar, 2018; Subhash & Cudney, 2018; Tsay et al., 2018)

Additionally, there are many classroom-specific features build-in:

• Content Management, including:
  • Learner-generated content and curation
  • Surveys
  • Batch creation
• User Management, including the ability to designate:
  • Learners
  • Managers (Teachers)
  • Tutors
  • Experts
• Learner Assessments
  • Assessments
  • Certifications
  • Compliance testing
  • Automatic learning interventions
• Classroom Management
  • Booking
  • Scheduling
  • iCal Support
• Social Learning
  • Clubs
  • Chats
  • FAQs
  • Experts
• Reporting
• Customization
  • Re-branding
  • Custom Domains
• Integrations
  • ADFS (UNT’s authentication)

This was just the icing on the cake, the list was a mile long. The only downside is that I needed to schedule a time for a demo, and that required a meeting which I could fit into my calendar this week. Unfortunately, I did not get a chance to play with the program, but I look forward to investigating it in the future.

References

• Bohyun, K. (2015). Gamification in Education and Libraries. Library Technology Reports, 51(2), 20–28. Retrieved from http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=101029551&lang=fr&site=ehost-live%5Cnfiles/498/2015 - Gamification in Education and Libraries.pdf
• Chou, Y. (2019). Boosters (Game Design Technique #31). Retrieved July 21, 2019, from YouTube website: https://youtu.be/sJPvqkoLn9s
• Kocadere, S. A., & Çağlar, S. (2018). Gamification from player type perspective: A case study. Educational Technology and Society, 21(3), 12–22.
• Subhash, S., & Cudney, E. A. (2018). Gamified learning in higher education: A systematic review of the literature. Computers in Human Behavior, 87(May), 192–206. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2018.05.028
• Tsay, C. H. H., Kofinas, A., & Luo, J. (2018). Enhancing student learning experience with technology-mediated gamification: An empirical study. Computers and Education, 121(December 2017), 1–17. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compedu.2018.01.009