Abstract:

Introduction:
The nature of employment is currently undergoing a digitalization and automation transformation, suggesting that we face a vast workforce re-skilling demand. The prompt transformation and the size of the workforce renders traditional onsite courses unmanageable, suggesting an online approach. One challenge with online education is low completion and high drop-out. Educational gamification (EG), using game elements in education, has proven effective for student retention and engagement in online learning. Although indicated functional for the students, the relative novel field of EG has overlooked areas, such as teacher’s acceptance and adoption. Studies have shown various results ranging from high acceptance, low adoption and mixed results. The common denominator of previous studies is a varied research design, unit of analysis and a high sample concentration in higher education. Also, the above studies did not investigate longitudinal changes in perception.

In a pre-post intervention case study we interviewed twelve mathematics (n =6) and language-learning (n =6) adult education teachers’ perceptions one month before and one month after the EG implementation. The transcripts underwent thematic coding and analysed with the Taxonomy of factors affecting attitudes towards educational technologies[18].

Key findings show that teachers' perceptions changed over time. Initially, perceptions indicated scepticism towards the implementation, which was viewed as unnecessary, childish, challenging to understand and not suited for adult education. In the post-interviews, teachers' notions indicated acceptance towards the implementation, making their work less arduous with admonishing students to hand in late assignments, motivate students, and facilitating activity in the course. The teachers expressed that their initial idea of EG tended towards a serious game artefact. They had been anxious that their workload would increase due to learning the new technology and supporting their students' groups, presumed unfamiliar to games. However, experiencing the automated EG system and not conjecturing a higher workload, their perception changed. The study shows that adult learning teachers’ perceptions of EG are restrained due to a belief of high ease-of-use and steep learning curve, depending on their misconception of EG. However, when perceiving the usefulness of the intervention in their daily work, their perception profoundly changed. The finding shows that there seems to exist a discrepancy regarding teachers' knowledge of EG, affecting their acceptance negatively regarding process and technology. The outcome has relevance for both the educational technology providers, to emphasise providing more explicit descriptions of their products to the teacher and scholars, investigating how to improve teachers in adult learning comprehension of educational technology and game-based learning-literacy. Lastly, directed towards EG scholars, there is a need to investigate teachers’ acceptance and adoption in interconnection with factors time-spent and use experience of EG to provide a more holistic understanding of the matter.

Keywords:

Adult Education, Distance Education, Gamification, Teacher adoption.