Do Graduate Students Wanna Have Fun?: Faculty and Student Reflections on Gamification

Gamification, the application of game elements in non-gaming settings, continues to be a topic researched to determine its level of impact - if any -  on student motivation, engagement, satisfaction, and academic performance (Hanus & Fox, 2015). Determining how these methods can be applied specifically to graduate-level courses and the impact of gamification on the learning experience has also been empirically examined (Barata, et. al., 2013).

Education 771, Research Design in Education, at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC)  is a hybrid, 15-week, graduate-level research design in education course for K-12 STEM teachers. To accommodate teachers’ time commitments during the term, the course alternates between face-to-face and online delivery by week. Gamification elements were integrated into the course design during the Spring 2017 term to examine whether or not their inclusion would impact student engagement, satisfaction and/or motivation during the course. Unique to this course is the background of the faculty member; he not only serves as an adjunct faculty but is also a full-time instructional technologist at UMBC. His expertise in the latter role enables him to provide insights from two important perspectives of the teaching and learning space when implementing these strategies.

Achievement-based and gamified learning are institutionally-supported means by which faculty and instructional designers might enhance student learning management system (LMS) interactions. Student interactions within the university’s LMS, Blackboard, have been used as a proxy for student engagement, and, in turn, a metric UMBC’s Instructional Technology group has considered in evaluating online and hybrid faculty course redesign.

Online assignments included discussion board activities, reading quizzes, a peer review for the main course deliverable, and a literature review to ground an action research project.  Gamification rewards were embedded in the course for students’ outstanding performance on the online orientation quiz and weekly reading quizzes, major assignments including human subjects research training and two tests, final grades, as well as “Easter Eggs.”

At the end of the spring term, this course ranked 34th by Blackboard use of the more than 2400 courses with Blackboard shells (i.e., including undergraduate and fully online courses) and ranked 3rd amongst all graduate-level hybrid courses. An end of course survey was administered to students to gather their perceptions of the impact of the gamification elements on both their engagement in the course and their motivation levels.

During this presentation, basic terminology related to gamification will be defined.  The concepts of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation will be discussed as well as the specific strategies used to incorporate gamification elements into the course design.   Qualitative data collected from the students in the end of course survey related to the gamification implementation will be presented. The faculty presenter will also reflect on his experience implementing the gamification elements, lesson learned, and plans for future course offerings. The presenters will seek best practices used by other institutions represented in the audience and will address audience member questions. Anyone involved in course design focusing on improving student engagement or interested in implementing gamification in their courses should attend. Slides, handouts, and related website links will be provided during the presentation and posted on the conference web site.

References:

Barata, Gabriel, Gama, Sandra, Jorge Joaquim, & Gonçalves, Daniel (2013), Engaging Engineering Students with Gamification An empirical study. 2013 5th Int. Conf. Games Virtual Worlds Serious Appl., pp. 1-8.

Hanus, Michael D, & Fox, Jesse  (2015). Assessing the effects of gamification in the classroom: A longitudinal study on intrinsic motivation, social comparison, satisfaction, effort, and academic performance. Computers & Education, 80152-161.