FRAMEWORK FOR GAMIFICATION OF SPECIALIZED SUBJECTS WITHIN ENGINEERING STUDIES

Gamification is a relatively new term forged along with the occurrence of new information technology, especially easy access to internet and smartphones. Gamification is a use of game mechanics, to modify the behavior of people in non-games situations to increase the involvement of individuals. The method is based on the pleasure that comes from overcoming the obstacles to reach next achievable level, which consists of challenges, competition, and cooperation. Gamification can engage people in activities which from bird's eye view might seem as boring, complicated or unattractive. Individual elements of game mechanics borrowed among the others from computer role-play games serves to the user as motivation factors. Game mechanics is constructed with some of the following features: Status, a system of skill levels and badges, raising their status in the specific community. Competition, a system of rivalry and challenges, both personal and groups. Achievements, a system of levels of difficulty, progress bars, rankings, and self-improvement, which allows constantly overcoming possible challenges. The sense of community and the possibility of contact with other people with similar needs and interests and the possibility of self-expression by forums, emails. Altruism, a system of exchange of virtual objects and points. A sense of threat felt by the user itself or a group to which he belongs. Loss aversion, which occurs as a result of rapid progress achievements at the beginning of the game, giving participants a sense of creating a virtual existence which is hard to abandon later on. The authors present a framework for a gamification which might be used in engineering studies. In a contrary to other university level studies, engineering subjects are not easy to handle and explained in a simple way, often involves physics, mathematic, mechanics issues. The biggest challenge is to impose a complicated matter of engineering problems into the game process. An exemplary smartphone application has been considered and described along with the suitable game scenario solution. The framework applied into the game might be used as a template for further studies.