Abstract:

Gamification refers to the use of game design elements in contexts other than games to increase user engagement with a system. This strategy has been used in learning contexts to improve learner’s motivation and attitudes towards learning and improve student’s participation, collaboration and self-guided learning. Gamification seems to be especially appropriate for higher education, where learners are expected to work autonomously and regulate their learning processes through the use of organization skills, time management and metacognition. Gamification can help to develop these skills by giving optimized feedback and visualization tools that help learners understand their progress and stay motivated. Although research on the effects of gamification in education proves that this strategy can help to create more exciting learning experiences, these results should be viewed with caution since there is a limited view on what are positive learning outcomes. When evaluating the impact of learning methodologies, it is fundamental to go beyond students grades and look for contributions to meaningful and deep learning.

Contrary to games that demand specialized skills and technical resources, gamification is a motivational structure that can be implemented by any teacher willing to do so. However, to be beneficial and have an impact on the learning experience, gamification systems need to be designed with the best practices of instructional design to mediate the learners' actions and learning contents.

There are several gamification frameworks available to those who which to use this methodology in a learning experience. These frameworks describe and categorize the available elements and parts of a game but usually lack the explanation of their pedagogical foundations.

In this paper, we present 12 key pedagogical principles for the use of gamification in the context of Higher Education. These principles are driven by socio-constructivist and learner-centred approaches and updated for gamification settings. They were identified by the researchers' teamwork on gamification in Higher Education. The main topics covered by these 12 principles are motivation, individuality, intentionality, autonomy, interaction, collaboration, challenge, elaboration, relevance, feedback, inquiry, and assessment. These principles are to be implemented using the ADDIE (Analysis, Design, Development, Implementation, and Evaluation) model for developing instruction to create effective learning experiences that consider the diversity of the participants and the specificities of content areas. Both gamification developers and researchers conducting evaluation experiments can benefit from the use of these principles to design and evaluate gamification experiences.

Keywords:

Gamification, Higher Education, Innovation, Instructional Design.