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A course gamification platform supporting student motivation and

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DOI: 10.1109/ICWOAL.2014.7009214

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 IEEE 2014 Int. Conference on Web and Open Access to Learning (ICWOAL), November 25-27, 2014, Dubai, UAE, pp. 1-4
A Course Gamification Platform Supporting Student
Motivation and Engagement
Darina Dicheva, Keith Irwin, Christo Dichev, and Swapna Talasila
Department of Computer Science, Winston Salem State University
Winston Salem, NC, USA
{dichevad, irwink, dichevc, stalasila113}@wssu.edu
Abstract—Gamification – the use of game design elements in
non-game contexts – has seen rapid adoption in various areas in
recent years. Its application in education is particularly
promising, due to its potential to shape user behavior in desirable
directions through increasing user motivation and engagement.
This work-in-progress paper presents a course gamification
platform aimed at supporting instructors to gamify courses that
target skill development, such as computing-related courses.
Index Terms—Game-Based Learning, Gamification, Computer
Science Education
I. INTRODUCTION
In recent years, gamification – the use of game design
elements in non-game contexts [1] – has seen rapid adoption
and there is a growing body of research on it [2]. Gamification
as a term gained popularity in 2010 and was primarily used to
explain the intent to enhance engagement with a product and
motivate particular user behavior through the use of game
elements. It has been incorporated with commercial success
into consumer-oriented applications and services on the web
and mobile devices. Gamification has been increasingly
popular in the areas of marketing, politics, health, and fitness,
among others. Large companies have also begun to use
gamification. Through mechanisms like points, badges,
progress bars, and leaderboards, gamification helps companies
improve sales, boost customer loyalty, increase audience
engagement, heighten employee motivation, drive
collaboration, and improve business performance.
The rising interest in it is reinforced by recent behavioral
studies, which reveal that a core set of intrinsic motivators
exists in all of us: the desire to improve, to achieve, to direct
our own lives, and to connect with others [3]. These motivators
are ever present and can be stimulated by the right experience.
Unsurprisingly, gamification is making its way into
education and training. Its success brought the attention of
educational researchers who saw the possibility of using
gamification as a tool to increase student motivation and
engagement [4]. Educational gamification is about discovering
extrinsic and intrinsic motivators that can make learning more
engaging. This can have a major impact on increasing students’
academic achievement and transforming them into successful
lifelong learners. Several studies (for example, [5, 4]) argue
that gamification can be successfully implemented in an
educational context to improve student motivation and
engagement. However, the reported evaluations are rather
limited and fragmentary and provide little evidence in
supporting the merit of gamification in learning. In addition,
the focus is mainly on adding a game layer to existing systems,
a ‘forced’ add-on design approach that has been criticized by
the traditional game design community. Furthermore, the
available systems have implemented few game mechanics and
assume that they work equally for all learners. Learners are
motivated differently though and what may motivate one can
demotivate another.
Therefore, while the initial results are encouraging, further
study is needed to determine the effect of using gamification
to improve student motivation and engagement, as well as the
factors that influence the effectiveness of gamified systems or
lead to complications in them. Related to this is the need to
improve our understanding of how and how effectively we can
enhance the design of instruction with game elements. The
mere presence of game mechanics and dynamics in a learning
environment is not sufficient to produce an engaging
experience for the learners. In order to be successful, the
gamified environment needs to be designed with motivational
factors in mind relevant to both the learning process and the
learners. It is also crucial to understand which game elements
are most effective for use in learning context, as well as how
they should be implemented, and how they should tie in to
rewards and learning objectives. The standing questions also
include: What mixture of gamification mechanisms will have
maximal impact on student motivation and achievement? Do
different game elements provide different levels of motivation
to different learners and if so can we ensure that they would
motivate everyone? Can both extrinsic and intrinsic
motivation be influenced by gamification? Could such
practices be successfully applied to a set of courses rather than
just a single one?
To address the above mentioned needs and questions, we
are developing a prototype gamification platform which will
facilitate the study of the effect of applying gamification to
courseware and will generate empirical evidence for the
appropriateness and efficacy of using game mechanics to
improve student motivation and engagement. The platform is
aimed at courses that target skill development rather than
memorization, such as Computer Science courses. We believe
that such courses will benefit most from gamification that can
facilitate continuous practicing and allow students to view the
progress in their skills.
II. GAMIFICATION OF EDUCATION
Student motivation can be described as their ability to elicit
cognitive and affective processes that direct actions toward
accomplishing specific tasks and achieving both learning and
performance goals [6]. Learning goals are tied into competence
and advancing one’s intellectual knowledge in a particular
area, whereas performance goals are associated with gaining
approval and rewards from teachers. As such, motivation
requires students to engage in active learning strategies,
construct new knowledge and believe in their ability to achieve
academic success. Evidence further suggests that the increase
of student motivation is associated with a bidirectional process
between intrinsic and extrinsic factors, such that students are
more likely to increase their willingness and desire to be
successful when they are engaged in a learning environment
that promotes high-expectancy learning culture, autonomy,
active learning, and its application to the real world [6, 7].
Various motivation-related educational approaches and
supporting tools have been developed and studied. In
particular, a significant body of research has been dedicated to
educational games, which have proved to act as a source of
inspiration and engagement in specific learning contexts.
However, a number of obstacles and concerns have been also
related to them including the high cost of their creation,
required resources, the tangible benefit of the time students
invest in playing them, and the appropriate balance of
pedagogy with entertainment. This has led to their infrequent
adoption in real classrooms. A simpler approach to increase
students’ motivation and engagement is to use gamification.
Badges, points, skill meters, etc., are only a narrow selection of
game mechanics that can be used to motivate learners and drive
desirable learning behaviors. Gamification can offer autonomy,
participatory learning experiences, a spirit of competition, and
new incentives for students, which may spur students’
engagement and interest and lead to more effective learning.
The application of gamification in the context of education
at present means taking the motivational properties of the
games and layering them on top of educational activities.
Education, however, is different from the corporate world
practice. A systematic method for creating gamified learning
experiences is lacking and little is known yet about how to
design an efficient educational gamification system. Successful
gamification is not the one that utilizes most game elements but
the one that utilizes game elements effectively.
The few published case studies on applying gamification in
education have reported creating plugins for LMSs (e.g. for
BlackBoard [5] and Moodle [8]), using third party software
that supports certain aspects of gamification (e.g. [9, 10]), or
developing standalone applications for supporting certain
aspect of gamification (e.g. [11, 12]). It is reported though that
in all but the last case the instructors are quite inflexible and
constrained by the hosting environment. For this reason, we
decided to develop a course gamification platform, which is
configurable and can support different sets of game mechanics
and dynamics and also allows full access to student
information in the system in order to perform learning
analytics.
III. THE COURSE GAMIFICATION PLATFORM
One of the essential differences between video games and
gamified courses is that the latter target acquiring new
knowledge and skills through covering learning material. Thus
the gamification design has to be implemented along with an
appropriate instructional design and the success of the former
depends of the appropriateness of the latter.
A. Gamification Design Elements
A systematic design assumes systematic classifying of the
design elements. With regard to the gamification design, the
literature review we conducted showed that there is not a
commonly agreed classification of game design elements. For
example, following traditional computer game theorists, the
authors of [13] categorize game elements into mechanics,
dynamics and aesthetics. Mechanics define the way games (as
systems) convert specific inputs into specific outputs.
Dynamics guide how players and the game mechanics interact
during the game. Aesthetics refer to the way the game
mechanics and dynamics interact with the game designer’s
artistry, to produce cultural and emotional outcomes [13].
Differently, Deterding et al. [1] categorize game design
elements at five levels of abstraction (from concrete to
abstract): interface design patterns, game design patterns or
game mechanics, design principles, heuristics or ‘lenses’,
conceptual models of game design units, and game design
methods and design processes. For the purpose of our design of
a course gamification platform, we use a two-level framework.
The first level combines the first two levels of Deterding’s
classification and as most of the authors we refer to it as game
mechanics. We further combine Levels 3 and 4 of Deterding’s
classification (game design principles and conceptual models)
and call them educational gamification design principles. We
use the term gamification design principles instead of game
design principles to stress the fact that some of them are not
specific to games, and especially in the education domain, have
been used in instructional systems as long as those exist. These
two categories roughly correspond to the first two components
of the framework in [13]. The last Deterding’s category ‘game
design methods and processes’, as well as Zichermann’s
‘aesthetics’, are essential for the implementation phase of the
platform but are not relevant to the gamified instructional
design.
We selected a basic set of game mechanics and educational
gamification design principles to implement in our prototype
course gamification system. The selection of game mechanics
was based on choosing such that have been used successfully
in games or educational gamification case studies but we tried
to minimize the number of mechanics that serve overlapping
purposes. The set of mechanics we chose as basic is as follows:
points, badges, progress bar, leader board, and virtual goods.
With regard to the educational gamification design principles,
the platform is designed to support the following: accrual
grading, progress (visible progression to mastery), instant
feedback, visible status (reputation, social credibility and
recognition), access/unlocking content, freedom of choice, and
freedom to fail (low risk from submission, multiple attempts).
Different combinations of these mechanisms may be
appropriate for gamifying different courses and/or preferred by
different instructors. Other mechanics and design principles
will be included and tested against the basic model in the
future.
The proposed gamification platform is course-independent.
An important step in its design was to find out to what extent
we can abstract common elements of gamified course designs,
which do not depend on the specific content of the courses.
This brought us to the concepts of course gamification model
and course gamification design document.
B. Course Gamification Model
In order to design the course gamification platform, we had
to come up with a general specification of how a course which
uses the platform would be organized and structured with
regard to its content and learning activities. To this end, we
proposed the notion of course gamification model. This model
fuses the underlying course structure with elements of game
mechanics. We defined the course gamification model
supported by our platform to include goals, skills, challenges,
and gaming rules. Each course has an instantiated course
gamification model specific for it. The challenges consist of
one or more problems. The rules specify under what conditions
(based on skills and challenges) specific game mechanics will
be applied. For example, a rule can specify that when all three
challenges in a certain goal are completed, a certain badge will
be given or some content will be unlocked for the student. In
the model supported by our platform, problems are typically
course exercises which can be used for self-learning and self-
assessment or for building graded tests. Different gamification
models may be appropriate for different courses, because the
structure of courses can vary significantly. However, the
model we propose should work well for courses which are
centered on skill development.
C. Course Gamification Design Documents and Instructional
Materials
One weakness of the existing educational gamification
research is that the available information addressing the
relation between used game mechanics and their pedagogical
goals in a format that other instructors can follow is scarce,
scattered and incomplete. For this purpose, we introduce the
notion of course gamification design document to signify a
description of how the game mechanics are used, why they are
used, and how they connect to the learning materials in the
context of the implemented course gamification model. We
believe that by standardizing the description of course
gamification design documents this will make it more likely
that when effective game mechanics and design principles are
identified, they will be integrated into other courses.
For the gamification of a specific course, the instructor has
to develop a specific course gamification design document and
instructional materials. The proposed course gamification
platform can then be used for configuring a gamified course (as
an instance of the implemented course gamification model) and
supporting its delivery.
D. Gamification Platform
The Course Gamification platform enables the authoring
and delivery of challenges for assessing students or for self-
learning and self-assessment. The challenges consist of
problems which are static and/or dynamic, and are typically
scored automatically. Static problems are such, for which the
correct solution can be given at the time of entering the
problem in the system. These include multiple choice
questions, multiple answer questions, true/false questions, fill-
in-the-gap questions and matching questions.
Dynamic problems are specific for computing-related
courses. They are, in effect, short computer programs which
use a random seed to generate a unique instance of a particular
question and then grade the correctness of the answer
submitted to that question. This allows variants of the same
problems to be used by different students on a test, or by the
same student to practice. The automatic grading of program
questions is essential for implementing the ‘immediate
feedback’ gamification design principle. The functional model
of the platform is shown in Fig. 1.
Gaming Rule
Configuration Tool Bank
Gamification Rule Engine
Goals Course Challenge Tool
Instructor Interface
Design Bank
Learner Interface
Skills
Learner Tracking Tool
Challenges Problem
Bank
Problems
Learner Modeling Tool
Static Dynamic Learner
Model Bank
Authoring Tool
Learner Model Visualizer
Fig. 1. Functional model of the gamification platform.
The platform consists of three components: an Instructor
support component, a Student support component, and a set of
data banks. The Instructor support component includes the
Configuration Tool, the Authoring Tool, and the Instructor
interface. The Instructor support component enables instructors
to specify the course gamification design (as defined in the
corresponding course gamification design document) and to
enter instructional content. Through the Configuration Tool
the instructor defines some course settings (e.g. passwords,
enrolling students, etc.), and specifies the gaming rules to be
used in the course. These rules define the conditions upon
which certain game mechanics are applied (e.g. a badge is
given or certain content is unlocked). The conditions typically
depend on completing one or more challenges. The game rules
govern the use of the system by the students.
The Authoring Tool is the module that supports the
instructor to enter the course material. The Authoring Tool
consists of the following sections: Problems, Skills, Challenges
and Goals. In the Problems section, the instructors create
different types of problems that they plan to use in the creation
of challenges. The Challenges section enables the instructor to
combine problems into challenges (graded or not graded). They
can combine any of the problems that have been created and
any problem can be used in any number of challenges. In the
Skills section the instructor defines the skills (learning
outcomes) that are targeted in the specific course. The skills are
then linked to problems that test them. While these skills have
topics, the topics are not confined by subjects, meaning that a
topic can cover any material and use any challenges that the
instructor decides to incorporate. In the Goals section of the
platform the instructor constructs different achievements that
can be reached by completing challenges and mastering skills.
These achievements represent the accomplishments of the
students and can be used to keep track of the student’s progress
through the course material.
The Learner support component includes the Learner
interface, used by the student to interact with the platform, the
Challenge Tool, and the Visualization Tool. The work of these
tools is supported by the Gamification Rule Engine, the
Learner Tracking Tool, and the Learning Modeling Tool. The
Challenge Tool delivers, checks, and grades challenges. The
Learner Tracking Tool collects and processes student
transaction logs, which are used by the Game Rules Engine and
for learning analytics. The Challenge and Learner Tracking
Tools, as well as the Gamification Rule Engine feed student
performance data to the Learning Modeling Tool, which
updates the learner model. The latter is used by the Learner
Model Visualizer to display information about the learner’s
performance and achievements on the student and instructor
interfaces.
The information created and used in the various modules of
the platform is stored in four Data Banks: the Course Design
Bank, the Problems Bank, the Gamification Rule Bank, and the
Learner Model Bank. The Gamification Rule Bank receives
information from the Configuration Tool. It houses the
gamification rules that trigger game-like actions, such as
leveling up, assigning rewards, or unlocking new content. The
Problems Bank holds all the problems created by the
instructors along with appropriate metadata.
The Course Design Bank contains all information pertinent
to a specific course. This includes course configuration
information, such as enrolled students, passwords, GUI skin
choices, etc.; information about the chosen game mechanics,
the defined goals, skills, and challenges and the connections
between them. The Learner Model Bank houses all learner
models. A learner model comprises all information the system
has about a particular student, including personal data, skills,
assessment results, self-study results, student log data, etc. The
learner models are used for adaptation and personalization of
the system performance to the individual student.
The course gamification platform is being implemented in
Python using the Django Web framework and the Eclipse
PyDev plug-in. Django (www. djangoproject.com/) is an open
source, high-level Python Web framework that enables rapid
development of high-performing Web applications. The
dynamic questions are being scripted in Lua
View publication stats
(www.lua.org/about.html). The platform will provide a built-in
library of functions to support instructors willing to create
dynamic problems and will facilitate building and managing
code libraries which can be used across related problems. It is
component-based which allows for easy expansion by
additional game features.
IV. CONCLUSION
While gamification has proven successful in increasing
engagement and interest in corporate contexts, gamified
learning still lacks a solid evidence base. Where games
traditionally model the real world, learning environments are
now attempting to emulate games in order to improve
learners’ motivation. However, there is no design guidance on
how to achieve that. This implies the need for both
understanding how to enhance the design of instruction with
game elements as well as tools that can assist in implementing
gamification effectively and enable instructional designers to
fulfill their objectives. The proposed here course gamification
platform targets these challenges.
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