When Personalized Gamification meets Computing Education: A Multidimensional Approach to Motivate Students to Learn

Question

1. What is the common issue in gamification design?

2. What factors impact gamified systems' success?

3. What are the factors that impact gamified systems' success and how do they act?

4. How to personalize gamification to users and context?

Accepted Answer

The common issue in gamification design is that most gamified applications offer the same design for all users, known as the onesize-fits-all (OSFA) approach. This approach fails to acknowledge that different people are motivated differently and by distinct game elements. Personalizing gamification involves tailoring gamification designs to specific aspects based on a list of game elements, ensuring that the gamified system only shows the leaderboard to people who like competition and offers stories to those who enjoy role-playing games. This approach aims to maximize gamification's contributions to addressing student motivational issues in computing education.

Accepted Answer

Factors impacting the success of gamified systems are crucial to understand for effective implementation. The research project aimed to answer this question by exploring user and contextual dimensions. Previous studies, such as Sailer and Homner (2020), have not defined these factors, making it essential to investigate them. By identifying the factors that influence gamification's success, the research contributes to the development of a multidimensional approach. This approach considers both contextual and user characteristics, providing empirical evidence and a comprehensive understanding of gamification's effectiveness in educational systems. The research project addressed this question through a literature review and an iterative method, generating results that contribute to the field and inform subsequent steps in the research process.

Accepted Answer

The factors that impact gamified systems' success include task-related factors, user and contextual factors, and their interaction. Task-related factors moderate gamification's effect, but it is limited to a one-time usage of a single game element. User and contextual factors, such as age, gender, previous experience, current working status, and having internet access, might moderate gamification's effects. The interaction between user and contextual factors also plays a significant role in gamification's success. These findings suggest that to personalize gamification, one should consider user and contextual dimensions simultaneously. The studies conducted in the provided section provide evidence that supports the view that multiple user and contextual factors, as well as their interaction, play a significant role in gamification's success.

Accepted Answer

Personalizing gamification to users and context involves considering multiple factors, including users' profiles, application context, and interactions. Research has shown that user and contextual dimensions play an essential role in understanding student motivation and performance in gamified educational systems. Personalization strategies should not only focus on one or few user dimensions but also consider contextual information and dimensions' interactions. Studies have proposed the idea of thinking about contextual information, such as the learning activity type (LAT), to define personalized gamification designs. Game elements should be selected based on their appropriateness for each LAT to maximize gamification's success. Empirical evidence is needed to determine the most useful game elements set according to users' preferences, considering their characteristics, geographic location, and LAT. Technological support is also necessary to provide transparent guidance on which game elements to use when and to whom. Overall, personalizing gamification to users and context requires a comprehensive approach that considers multiple dimensions and provides practical solutions for implementing personalized gamification in educational systems.

Accepted Answer

Personalized gamification, as compared to the OSFA approach, has been empirically validated through two experimental studies conducted within the context of CE. Study 1 aimed to understand the effect of personalized gamification on users' motivations in assessment learning tasks, comparing it to the OSFA approach. The study involved a 2x2 mixed factorial experiment with 26 computing students, who engaged in two sessions with different assessment disciplines. Semi-structured interviews were conducted to understand participants' motivations. Study 2 further tested the comparison between OSFA and personalized gamification, involving 58 computing students from three institutions in northwestern Brazil. The study explored possible moderators of the difference between the two approaches and conducted exploratory analyses. The findings suggested that personalized gamification improved student autonomous motivation compared to the OSFA approach, but no support was found in the replication study. Exploratory analyses revealed that gender and education positively moderated personalization's effect, while motivation varied according to different factors for students using the OSFA design. Overall, personalized gamification may reduce outcome variation and provide positive learning experiences, but further research is needed to explore its effectiveness and potential improvements.

Accepted Answer

GARFIELD is a data-driven recommender system for personalizing gamification based on feedback from real usage data. It aims to recommend suitable gamification designs that lead students to an expected level of intrinsic motivation while considering their characteristics. GARFIELD follows the CRISP-DM methodology and uses data from 221 students who used a gamified educational system. The system provides an interactive, web-based interface for practitioners to personalize gamified practices based on empirical data. Although its recommendations have limited predictive power, GARFIELD is considered a reliable starting point for future research and practice. It was introduced in the International Conference on Artificial Intelligence in Education [Rodrigues et al. 2022c].

Accepted Answer

Personalized gamification has been shown to positively impact computing education by addressing motivational issues and improving learning outcomes. Through empirical evidence from 10 studies, this thesis explored the dimensions, design, and comparison of personalized gamification in the context of computing education (CE). The research identified factors that moderate gamification's effectiveness and provided guidance on personalizing gamification based on user and contextual information. The personalized approach, GARFIELD, was found to enhance student motivation and offer a more effective alternative to the OSFA approach. The thesis' contributions include empirical evidence on the impact of personalized gamification, guidance on its design, and insights into its effectiveness compared to standard gamification. Despite limitations discussed in the research, the findings provide valuable insights for practitioners and researchers in the field of technology-enhanced learning.

When Personalized Gamification meets Computing Education: A Multidimensional Approach to Motivate Students to Learn

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Most frequently asked questions

1. What is the common issue in gamification design?

2. What factors impact gamified systems' success?

3. What are the factors that impact gamified systems' success and how do they act?

4. How to personalize gamification to users and context?

5. How does personalized gamification compare to OSFA approach?

6. What is GARFIELD?

7. How does personalized gamification impact computing education?

Citations

Exploring the impact of gamification and the Flippity tool in teaching Brazilian culture: insights and recommendations

References

The Gamification of Learning: a Meta-analysis

Tailored gamification: A review of literature

The Dark Side of Gamification: An Overview of Negative Effects of Gamification in Education

Analysing gamification elements in educational environments using an existing Gamification taxonomy

State of Research on Gamification in Education: A Bibliometric Survey.

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