Abstract:

Games play an important role within the education process as they boost student participation while fostering social and interactive skills that proliferate motivation, focus and fun. The idea of integrating game theory aspects within the virtual learning environment is meant to intensify their interaction while effectively participating in learning activities. In this paper we present the concept of gamifying a social-network like virtual learning environment to further take advantage of e-learning affordances while ensuring that the learning tools are optimally employed as intended. The underlying system makes use of learning analytics to implicitly track students’ actions and progress while instilling a competitive game-like element within the same learning environment. Use of badges and leaderboards provide a welcome incentive while employing points as part of our formative assessment philosophy are provided in the form of analytics. Our results show that such techniques foster increased participation as well as promotes a holistic comprehension of the learning environment while supporting creative and critical skills. We draw on our experiences to provide numerous recommendations on how to take full advantage of a gamified virtual learning environment while ensuring to enhance the e-learning process.

Keywords:

Game theory, smart environment, virtual learning environment.