Abstract:

The paper deals with possible use of gamification and gamified resources for teaching the students majoring in linguistics to deepen students’ motivation for acquiring new competences and to make learning process more enjoyable. Gamified online applications for learning foreign languages have gained much in popularity (e.g. Duolingvo), thus proving that the form of presenting information to the hi-tech generation should adapt to the changing circumstances, combining traditional approaches with new ones. According to this, the authors develop the gamified online course on USA country study and present it to the experimental group of third-year students majoring in linguistics in the South Ural State University. Therefore, the objective of the research is to prove that introducing the gamified online course as an additional tool in teaching USA country study has positive influence on motivation to learn and develop competences of the linguistic students.

To address the objective of the research, the authors analyzed the papers on gamification in general and the use of gamification in education. They also accomplished the study of possible tools for creating e-learning environment and chose an online platform for publishing it (Moodle-based E-SUSU 2.0 http://edu.susu.ru/ available for the students and faculty of the South Ural State University). Then, according to the university course structure of the subject, the authors designed a gamified self-study online course that included the information presented in various forms: texts, audio and video materials and other graphical means; sets of online activities, such as puzzles, quizzes, tests, etc were added to help students acquire new data, followed by external links for extra information. To raise the students’ interest and motivation, each section of the course was gamified thus being presented in a quest form with a possibility to choose difficulty level, with time limit set on completing each task, immediate feedback, certain amount of points to score or to lose (depending on the difficulty level), peer pressure and unlimited amount of tries.

To evaluate learning outcomes, both the experimental and control group were tested at the end of the course and the authors compared the results. Besides, the students completed a feedback survey where they expressed their overall impression.
The final comparison of test results and survey responses proved that the use of gamification in university education is productive. The students from the experimental group showed more profound understanding of the subject. Moreover, the course, designed as a self-study tool, kept the students motivated to continue their studies and achieve the best results possible.

Keywords:

Gamification, gamified resources, gamified online course, e-learning, self-study tool, the USA coutry study, hi-tech generation, linguistics, higher education.