THE CONVERGING FUTURE OF LEARNING THROUGH GAMIFICATION. APPLYING INMERSIVE SCENARIOS AND GAMEPLAY NARRATIVES IN E-LEARNING ENVIRONMENTS

Over the last decade we witness one of the most profound changes of our educational philosophy. On the one hand, the explosion of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) and, on the other hand, the fact that games nowadays are a big deal and are slowly becoming an ever more ubiquitous element of daily life. These changes reveal that education’s digital future has not yet been determined but, on the contrary, we are shaping it now; something that brings us to the following question: how do people will learn best digitally?

In this article we are using gamification as an educational tool in order to generate more engagement and deeper learning. Research related to gamification implementation in education demonstrates that gamification can be effective and produce behavior change, but on the other hand it may affect the internal motivation and alter the overall student experience inside or outside the online setting. These assumptions are forcing a rethinking of how gamification in education is being applied.

Through this article we will underline the fact that the field of games for learning is now mature. Secondly, we will investigate which game elements should we implement and why. Our starting point will be the Self determination Theory (SDT) but along the way we will focus on another key element of engagement, narratives. We will investigate the potential outcomes of gamification by implementing storytelling and by designing an immersive scenario in order to generate high engagement. We are living in a world of games and gamers and engagement matters. Given the fact that storytelling acts are crucial for the plot of a video gameplay we will examine how storytelling and branched scenarios can foster intrinsic motivation.