Abstract:

In context of e-learning gamification can be a way to support students to sustain or even increase motivation in order to raise the success rate of learning. Gamified learning experiences are based on certain principles like direct feedback, freedom to fail and an overview of the individual learning success. In our computer sciences classes, we implement such gamified learning by means of a web-based coding environment in which students can work on individual exercises time and location-independent. By working with that web-based coding environment students create meta-data. Such data can be evaluated by means of data-science mechanisms in order to extract valuable information about the performance of individual students. This paper presents an experiment to identify different groups of students by exploiting the meta-data of our coding environment. Such information can be used by lecturers to provide additional support or by students to get additional feedback about their level of knowledge.

Keywords:

e-learning, gamification, web-based coding environment.