Abstract:

The great appeal of computer games has prompted the use, in various fields, of several of its elements and design techniques in order to strengthen the commitment and motivation of human resources. This new trend is called gamification and has produced very positive results in areas such as sales promotion, health services and websites.

The major challenges in the field of education, where the strengthening of students' motivation is one of the most important issues, led to the implementation of gamification in the educational process.

Electronic platforms or alternatively learning management systems are the basic technological infrastructure (software) for online and distance learning environments. Moodle is a very popular online platform, especially in adult education, which has a very active and dynamic community of users, with the help of which it constantly evolves and enriches itself. The tools it provides make it a very attractive option for the implementation of the gamification practice in education.

The goal of this project is the investigation of the effect gamification has on students’ participation and commitment. Given the fact that the fruitless offering of extrinsic rewards has a negative effect on students’ inner motivations, the choice of the game elements that will be used as well as the proper design of a gamification system are particularly important. In this study, we made use of elements which belong to the game components, as well as the game mechanics and dynamics. The design of the gamification system is based on the theory of Self-Determination. All elements of gamification are utilized in order to satisfy, through an elaborate design, the students’ need to feel competent, autonomous and related to their social environment.

This study has been conducted on students in the last year of primary school and pertains to the formative assessment of students in the English language course. The Moodle e-Learning platform, which was parameterized in order to support the practice of gamification, constitutes the study’s technical infrastructure. An additional goal of this project is to investigate the suitability of the parameterization of Moodle for the implementation of gamification and also whether or not a gamification environment is user- friendly for students aged 11-12 years. The results of the study are encouraging for the effect of gamification on enhancing participation as well as on addressing the pupils’ needs, as they are detailed in the Self-Determination Theory. Moodle did support the implementation of the current gamified system, but it is essential we highlight the need to develop automated processes that will be used to support more demanding scenarios. In addition, Moodle as well as its parameterization used to support gamification, were considered to be user- friendly by the students even though they had no prior experience. Due to the small number of students sampled it is essential we conduct a research on a bigger scale.

Keywords:

Gamification, primary education, English language, formative assessment, Self-Determination Theory, Moodle.