Abstract:

Gamification is the use of game design elements in a non-game contexts (Deterding et al. 2011). It is an intervention that has been used in a business setting for a number of years and is now becoming more and more applied in higher education (Dicheva et al. 2015). We present the practical implications of our Gamification for Student Engagement framework developed for Higher Education.

Landers (2014) suggests that gamification is the process of identifying, extracting, and embedding game attributes into learning, in order to affect the behaviours and attitudes that support the achievement of learning outcomes. His theory describes how this works in a successfully gamified learning situation. By employing gamification, the relationship between instructional content and the achievement of learning outcomes becomes explicit and can be altered in specific ways to affect student attitudes and behaviours oriented towards a particular learning goal. In addition to this, Bedwell’s taxonomy of game attributes (Bedwell et al. 2010) makes it theoretically possible to narrow down the game attributes that have an evidence base for supporting any given learning outcome.

Student engagement can be explained using learning theories (e.g. see Kahu 2013). This framework can be used to understand player engagement and open up the door for learning theories to explain the effect of game attributes on players and thus on students. This allows us to define the aspects and functions of the behaviours/attitudes concept that underpins the theory of gamified learning. Now that the behaviour/attitudes that can be affected by gamification are better defined, we can start to consider exactly what gamification is affecting in engagement, how this happens, and what to look for to see if its works. This allows us to fill in the blanks between learning outcome and instructional content.

Building on the work of Landers, Bedwell and Kahu we will explore ways in which our new consolidated framework of Gamification for Student Engagement may be used in practice.

References:
[1] Bedwell, W.L., Pavlas, D., Heyne, K., Lazzara, E.H., Salas, E. (2012) Toward a Taxonomy Linking Game Attributes to Learning. Simulation & Gaming, 43(6), 729-760. https://doi.org/10.1177/1046878112439444
[2] Deterding, S., Sicart, M., Nacke, L., O’Hara, K., & Dixon, D. (2011). Gamification. using game-design elements in non-gaming contexts. Proceedings of the 2011 Annual Conference Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems - CHI EA ’11, 2425. https://doi.org/10.1145/1979742.1979575
[3] Dicheva, D., Dichev, C., Agre, G., & Angelova, G. (2015). Gamification in Education: A Systematic Mapping Study. Educational Technology & Society, 18(3), 75–88.
[4] Kahu, E. R. (2013). Framing student engagement in higher education. Studies in Higher Education, 38(5), 758–773. https://doi.org/10.1080/03075079.2011.598505
[5] Landers, R. N. (2014). Developing a Theory of Gamified Learning: Linking Serious Games and Gamification of Learning. Simulation & Gaming, 45(6), 752–768. https://doi.org/10.1177/1046878114563660

Keywords:

Gamification, Engagement, Theory, Practice, Pedagogy, Higher Education, constructivism.