Gamification E-learning Course: "GAMIFICAÇÃO: ESTRATEGIAS DE JOGOS APLICADAS AO E-LEARNING"

Going to the third edition ...

"GAMIFICAÇÃO: ESTRATEGIAS DE JOGOS APLICADAS AO E-LEARNING" 

início: 29 setembro.

Motivar através de desafios e incentivos é essencial na formação. A GAMIFICAÇÃO aplica elementos característicos dos jogos em ambientes não lúdicos, como a formação e-learning, para motivar a aprendizagem.
Venha conhecer as ferramentas ou elementos de jogos que podem contribuir para criar cursos online mais eficazes.

Motivating through challenges and incentives is essential in education and training. Gamification applies elements from games in non-game environments, such as e-learning, to motivate learners. Come and see the tools or game elements that can help to create more effective online courses.

CURSO ONLINE intensivo (30 horas).
 

Mais informações/inscrições: http://bit.ly/curso-online-gamificacao

Gamificação na prática: aplicar elementos e técnicas de jogos na sala de aula.

III Jornadas Pedagógicas - A sala de aula do séc. XXI: desafia-te! 

Sessão Gamificação na prática: aplicar elementos e técnicas de jogos na sala de aula.
Escola Secundária de Valongo, 13 de julho de 2016

Seminário "Gamificação: Estratégias de Jogos Aplicadas no Ensino e na Formação"

Jornal Expresso: A Jogar é que a Gente Aprende

Jornal Expresso - 19 de Março de 2016:

Com a ‘gamificação’ do ensino, os alunos tornam-se jogadores, as aulas desafios, há pontos e medalhas. Motivar é o grande objetivo. Em Portugal já se experimenta.

With 'gamification' of education, students become players, and classes become challenges where there are points and medals. Motivating is the ultimate goal. Portugal is already trying.

Ver mais em: http://leitor.expresso.pt/#library/expresso/semanario2264/revista-e-2264/-e/a-jogar-e-que-a-gente-aprende

Algumas pequenas contribuições para o artigo:

Gamification FAQ #2: What Gamification is Not

Gamification and games are different things. A gamified application is not a game but, sometimes, it may look like a game. Gamified applications' users should feel like players in a game, but they are noy playing a game. They are doing something else, probably some useful task.

Paharia (2013), about the differences between games and gamification, argues that “gamification is not about creating games at all” and Kapp et al. (2014), refer that “gamification uses parts of games but is not a game” (p. 69). Also Huang and Soman (2013) point that “if it is already a game, it is not a form of gamification” (p. 15). Hence, gamification is not a game (Wu, 2011) neither an attempt to simply make an application look like a game (Kumar and Herger, 2013) and also not about building full-fledged games, like serious games (Deterding et al., 2011; Werbach and Hunter, 2012). Serious games, are not the same as gamification (Schlagenhaufer and Ambert, 2014). 

Similarly, gamification of education is not the same as Digital Game-Based Learning (DGBL), an approach that uses actual games (serious games, commercial games or games made by students) in a learning environment. It is not also the same as simulations, although all of these terms are related. Kapp et al. (2014) use the notion of Interactive Learning Event (ILE) to describe these different approaches: games, gamification and simulations. In Kapp et al. perspective, gamification is a type of an ILE and different from the other two types. 

Therefore, gamification should not be confused with a process of transformation of some non-game activity into a game. Particularly, regarding education, the application of the concept does not mean that the contents of the various subjects are taught in the form of a game. 

See also FAQ #1: What is Gamification?

References:

Paharia, R. (2014). A new day for gamification, or is it? [Blog post].

Kapp, K., Blair, L., and Mesch, R. (2014). The Gamification of Learning and Instruction Fieldbook: Ideas into Pratice. Wiley.

Huang, W. and Soman, D. (2013). A practitioner’s guide to gamification of education. Technical report, Rotman School of Management University of Toronto, Canada. 

Wu, M. (2011). What is gamification, really? [Blog post] 

Kumar, J. and Herger, M. (2013). Gamification at Work: Designing Engaging Business Software. The Interaction Design Foundation., Aarhus, Denmark.

Deterding, S., Dixon, D., Khaled, R., and Nacke, L. (2011). From game design elements to gamefulness: Defining ”gamification”. In Proceedings of the 15th International Academic MindTrek Conference: Envisioning Future Media Environments, MindTrek ’11, pages 9–15, New York, NY, USA. ACM.

Werbach, K. and Hunter, D. (2012). For the Win: How Game Thinking Can Revolutionize Your Business. Wharton Digital Press.

Schlagenhaufer, C. and Ambert, M. (2014). Psychology theories in gamification: A review of information systems literature. In European, Mediterranean and Middle Eastern Conference on Information Systems 2014, Doha, Qatar.

PhD Thesis Online

My PhD thesis

Using Gamification to Improve Participation in Social Learning Environments

is available online at ResearchGate and Academia.edu










Abstract:

This thesis addresses the problem of students’ disengagement by investigating if gami- fication can make a contribution to solve the problem and how. Gamification is a new trend that aims to improve people’s engagement, motivation, loyalty or participation. It started as a marketing tool but widespread to several different areas where peoples’ involvement is a key issue. Gamification is inspired by the success and popularity of video games and looks for ways to use game’s features in non-game contexts, as a way to drive game-like engagement. 

While schools are struggling with the lack of motivation and engagement of many of their students, technology is part of most children and teenagers lives in today’s societies. They are heavy users of several media that, through mobile and wireless technologies, are almost permanently present and available everywhere. Schools have to compete for students’ attention and time and find the ways to use technology in their favour and fill the gap between school and the outside technological world. Also, most of today’s students are video game’s consumers. Games have been used in educational and training scenarios for a long time. But building full-fledged games with learning purposes has high implementations costs. 

Gamification is a way to take advantage of the games’ power with lesser costs and ef- fort. An initial research on gamification revealed that education was precisely one of the main fields that could benefit from this new trend. As a main goal, the thesis proposes a framework to help teachers using technology-enhanced learning environments powered with gamification. It is expected that these environments can improve students’ behaviors towards school and learning. The framework also defines what should be the high level architecture of gamified digital systems. This architecture is platform independent and is proposed as a way to help developers in the implementation of gamified systems, by highlighting what their main building blocks should be. Based on a broad literature review, this thesis presents the most used game elements and game techniques found in already existing gamified applications. A set of those elements and techniques were included in the proposed framework. 

Further research was needed to investigate the impact of gamification and how to mea- sure that impact. The tendency to experience flow was chosen as a measure of engage- ment. Flow is a psychological state felt by people when they act with total involvement. People can experience flow when performing an engaging task. A high tendency to experience flow means high intrinsic motivation and a better engagement. The thesis addressed these issues by conducting an empirical study with primary education young students. The study investigated if a social learning environment with gamification tools would be more able to increase students disposition to experience flow than a non-gamified version. In this experiment, some gamified learning activities were set following the guidelines of the proposed framework. 

The results from the empirical study showed that there was an improvement in the students’ disposition for flow when using the gamified version of the social learning en- vironment. The students’ average score had an increase and the statistical test taken allowed to conclude that the average score increase has statistical significance.

2015: My PhD Year

 

2015 is near the end. 2015 is the year I finished my PhD, on November, 27th:

I hope to continue my research around gamification and e-learning in 2016.

For now, this is the thesis abstract:

This thesis addresses the problem of students’ disengagement by investigating if gamification can make a contribution to solve the problem and how. Gamification is a new trend that aims to improve people’s engagement, motivation, loyalty or participation. It started as a marketing tool but widespread to several different areas where peoples’ involvement is a key issue. Gamification is inspired by the success and popularity of video games and looks for ways to use game’s features in non-game contexts, as a way to drive game-like engagement. 

While schools are struggling with the lack of motivation and engagement of many of their students, technology is part of most children and teenagers lives in today’s societies. They are heavy users of several media that, through mobile and wireless technologies, are almost permanently present and available everywhere. Schools have to compete for students’ attention and time and find the ways to use technology in their favour and fill the gap between school and the outside technological world. Also, most of today’s students are video game’s consumers. Games have been used in educational and training scenarios for a long time. But building full-fledged games with learning purposes has high implementations costs. 

Gamification is a way to take advantage of the games’ power with lesser costs and effort. An initial research on gamification revealed that education was precisely one of the main fields that could benefit from this new trend. As a main goal, the thesis proposes a framework to help teachers using technology-enhanced learning environments powered with gamification. It is expected that these environments can improve students’ behaviors towards school and learning. The framework also defines what should be the high level architecture of gamified digital systems. This architecture is platform independent and is proposed as a way to help developers in the implementation of gamified systems, by highlighting what their main building blocks should be. Based on a broad literature review, this thesis presents the most used game elements and game techniques found in already existing gamified applications. A set of those elements and techniques were included in the proposed framework. 

Further research was needed to investigate the impact of gamification and how to measure that impact. The tendency to experience flow was chosen as a measure of engagement. Flow is a psychological state felt by people when they act with total involvement. People can experience flow when performing an engaging task. A high tendency to experience flow means high intrinsic motivation and a better engagement. The thesis addressed these issues by conducting an empirical study with primary education young students. The study investigated if a social learning environment with gamification tools would be more able to increase students disposition to experience flow than a non- gamified version. In this experiment, some gamified learning activities were set following the guidelines of the proposed framework. 

 

The results from the empirical study showed that there was an improvement in the students’ disposition for flow when using the gamified version of the social learning environment. The students’ average score had an increase and the statistical test taken allowed to conclude that the average score increase has statistical significance.

Soon, the all thesis will be on-line.


Happy New Year!

COIED 2015 - Conferência Online de Informática Educacional

A COIED 2015 - Conferência Online de Informática Educacional tem início já na próxima segunda-feira, 12 de outubro. O programa completo e detalhado está disponível aqui. As inscrições ainda estão abertas (até 11 de outubro).

Participação no programa de workshops com 

Vamos ver o que dá ...

Para já, aqui fica a sessão de abertura:

The Gartner's 2015 Hype Cycle and a Year of Research on Gamification of Education

This year, gamification was not included in the Gartner's Hype Cycle. In the last four years, gamification was part of the cycle: see this post. This gave rise to some comments, like this one: The Hype is Over – Gamification is Here to Stay.

What really happened is that Gartner moved gamification to a digital marketing hype cycle:

This is also pointed by Toby Beresford in Quora: Why Gamification is not included in the Gartner's 2015 Hype Cycle:

As Jorge Simões points out, gamification hasn't gone - it's simply been downgraded from a major "game changer" theme to being a component of another one - in this case 'digital marketing'.  It's worth noting that few gamification practitioners really agree with Gartner's view that gamification is a purely digital technology.

In 2014, Gamification was on the "Through of Disillusionment", with a prediction to reach the "Plateau of Productivity" in two to five years. In 2015 in seems that Gamification reached the bottom and was kept out of the cycle. No problem with that. It will probably move to the "Slope of Enlightenment" but Gartner is now considering it just as a digital marketing tool and probably will keep it out of the cycle. But gamification is not relevant just for marketing purposes and it can even be used in non-digital environments (which is not the Gartner's opinion).

Gamification is still considered as relevant in Education and several other contexts. Darina Dicheva and Christo Dichev submitted a paper to E-LEARN 2015 (Gamification in Education: Where Are We in 2015?) where they present a follow-up of an initial study - Gamification in education: A systematic mapping study (see this post). 

In this follow-up (covering the period from July 2014 till June 2015), the authors found that there is "... inconclusive and insufficient evidence for making valid claims about the efficacy of gamification in education". They also point for " ... the drop of the empirical studies reporting positive results and the big jump of the studies with inconclusive or negative results".

It seems that, also in education, gamification is reaching the "Through of Disillusionment". Or it means that we still need further research on how to apply gamification effectively.

The paper also includes a definition for Gamification in Education: "the introduction of game elements and gameful experiences in the design of learning processes" (I have my definition of gamification in education: the use of game elements and game techniques in technology-enhanced learning environments in order to improve students’ motivation and engagement).

References:

Dicheva, D., Dichev, C., Agre, G., and Angelova, G. (2015). Gamification in education: A systematic mapping study (in press). Educational Technology and Society, 18(3). 

Dicheva, D., Dichev, C. (2015). Gamification in education:Where we satnd in 2015?. E-LEARN 2015 - World Conference on E-Learning, Kona, Hawaii, October 19-22, 2015

An Experiment to Assess Students’ Engagement in a Gamified Social Learning Environment

New paper published in issue 43 of eLearningPapers - Applied Games and Gamification – Drivers for Change:

An Experiment to Assess Students’ Engagement in a Gamified Social Learning Environment 

This paper presents a research work conducted to address students’ disengagement by investigating if gamification can make a contribution to solving this problem. The disposition to experience flow, a psychological state, was used as a measurement of engagement. An experiment allowed testing a research hypothesis concerning flow in a gamified environment.

co-authored with Sérgio Mateus, Rebeca Redondo a Ana Vilas.

The overall purpose of the experiment was to test the hypothesis that a gamified version of a Social Learning Environment (SLE) causes in its users an increase in their disposition to experience flow (see this other post) than the non-gamified version. The disposition to experience flow was assessed by using a questionnaire based on the Portuguese version of the DFS-2.

The experiment tested a group of subjects (a class of 3rd grade students) before and after the treatment (using the gamified version of the SLE). A pre-test, using the DFS-2, indicated how the subjects did prior to administration of the treatment condition and a post-test evaluated the subjects after the treatment. The effect was taken as the difference between the pre-test and the post-test scores.

Although small, an increase in the students’ tendency to experience flow was observed, particularly in the flow dimensions related to flow outcomes.

Issue 43 of eLearning Papers has two other gamification papers:

To Game or not to Game – a pilot study on the use of gamification for team allocation in entrepreneurship education 

and

What really works in gamification? Short answer: we don’t know, so let’s start thinking like experimenters

The 7 Most Used Game Elements and Game Techniques in Education

A literature review can show what are the sets of game elements and game techniques that are commonly used in gamified educational environments. Points, badges, leaderboards, levels and progress bars seem to be the most used elements. Recent research confirms this notion.  

Dicheva et al. (2015) conducted a systematic mapping study covering existing empirical work in gamification in education. One of the research questions behind this study was “What game elements have been used in gamifying educational systems?”. The study considered 34 articles and conference papers published from 2011 and until the first semester of 2014. Most of the publications occurred in 2013 (19) and 2014 (12). In their study, Dicheva et al., first found what were the most cited game design principles and game mechanics. These terms are considered here as “game elements” and “game techniques”, respectively. 

The study reached the following conclusions: 

• The most used game elements were points, badges, leaderboards, levels, virtual goods and avatars (this one mentioned only in one publication);

• The most used game techniques were “visible status”, “social engagement”, “freedom of choice”, “freedom to fail”, “rapid feedback” and “goals/challenges”;

• These game elements and techniques were mostly appplied to blended learning courses; 

• Only two papers considered K-12 education. The remainning publications concern higher education and training;

• Computer Science and ICT educators are the early adopters of gamification;

• There is a scarce empirical research on the efectiveness of gamification in learning
  environments;

• The authors of the reviewed papers share the opinion that gamification has the potencial to improve learning.

Also Seaborn and Fels (2015) surveyed 31 gamified systems and find that the most employed game elements elements and game techniques were points (18), badges (15), rewards (11), leaderboards (11), challenges (6), status (5), progression (3), achievements (3), avatars (3), mini-games (2), roles (2), narrative (1), time pressure (1), and feedback (1).

Farber (2015), refers some "gamification mechanics"  (game elements), used in gamification and quest-based learning. Those elements are leaderboards, badges, modding, avatars, in-game economies, game geography and Easter eggs.

Literature reviews revealed that, although several articles and conference papers have been published since 2010, there is still a lack of empirical research on the use and the benefits of gamification. This happens not also in education but also in the other fields of application of the gamification approach. Nevertheless, according to Hamari et al. (2014), education is the most common context found in research. 

Regarding gamification for the K-12 education more empirical research is needed. Another important conclusion is that gamification does produce positive effects and benefits and gamification of education, in particular, has a potential impact on learning. This review also shows that there is a set of common game components used in most learning settings.

Hence, the most used game elements and techniques, mainly according to the studies from Dicheva et al. (2015), Seaborn and Fels (2015), Thiebes et al. (2014) and Hamari et al. (2014), are shown in the following table:

References:

Dicheva, D., Dichev, C., Agre, G., and Angelova2, G. (2015). Gamification in education: A systematic mapping study (in press). Educational Technology and Society,, 18(3). 

Farber, M. (2015). Gamify Your Classroom: A Field Guide to Game-Based Learning. Peter Lang Publishing, Inc., New York.

Hamari, J., Koivisto, J., and Sarsa, H. (2014). Does gamification work? – a litera- ture review of empirical studies on gamification. In proceedings of the 47th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, pages 6–9, Hawaii, USA.

Seaborn, K., Pennefather, P., and Fels, D. (2013). Reimagining leaderboards: Towards gamifying competency models through social game mechanics. In Lennart E. Nacke, K. H. and Randall, N., editors, Proceedings of the First International Conference on Gameful Design, Research, and Applications, pages 107–110, New York. ACM.

Thiebes, S., Lins, S., and Basten, D. (2014). Gamifying information systems - a synthesis of gamification mechanics and dynamics. In Twenty Second European Conference on Information Systems, Tel Aviv.

Gamification on the Future of EdTech

On Future Of EdTech 101: Automation, Curation And Gamification by Nathan Deardorff:

By the year 2050 higher education will be transformed by three trends: automation, curation, and gamification. 

(...) gamification, the act of turning something that is traditionally not a game into one. It’s like getting a gold star for a good job, but better. A contemporary example of this is the web app, HabitRPG. It takes after other Role Playing Games by giving characters magical abilities, experience points and health. The users can gain powers and experience by completing self assigned tasks. If the tasks are not completed by the due date, the user looses health. This system could be implemented for homework assignments. But the in-class application is far more exciting. Imagine automated tracking of class participation, class grades, and work speed. This carrot-and-stick system would motivate students to earn points by actively engaging in the classroom, and finish their quizzes as quick as possible with highest accuracy. Performance is public via game points or badges. A student who can actively brag that he outscored his classmates in attention, or is the fastest quizzer in the school will feel the euphoria of a job well done, and the other students will feel the stick of motivation to out score their competitor.

I don't agree with the definition of gamification (turning something that is traditionally not a game into one) but this article shows the importance of gamification for the education sector.

Slides "From Games to Gamification"

Slides of the lecture held in June 18, 2014, in a session of student projects presentation of the course Computer Games Development of the MSc in Informatics and Computing Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, University of Porto.

Palestra MIEIC Junho 2014 from Jorge Simões

A Brief History of Gamification: Part III - The Definitions

The third part of The Brief History of Gamification is here, following A Brief History of Gamification: Part I - The Origin and A Brief History of Gamification: Part II - The Name. I invite others to contribute (with comments to the post) if something is missing and to correct what may be wrong or incomplete.

This third post is about the definition of the concept that became known as gamification. There are probably as many definitions for gamification as people writing about it. Gamification definitions have been proposed since the word appeared in 2010. Some of them were listed previously in this blog in a post where 23 definitions were listed. Those definitions were found in web logs, technical reports and academic papers. Some of them are redundant or very similar to each other. 

Here are some of those definitions and a few more recent ones:

• “The notion that gaming mechanics can be applied to routine activities” (Johnson et al., 2014);

•  “The use of game mechanics and rewards in non-game setting to increase user engagement and drive desired user behaviors” (Duggan and Shoup, 2013);

• “Implementing design concepts from games, loyalty programs, and behavior economics to drive user engagement” (Zichermann and Linder, 2013);

• “The use of game elements and game-design techniques in non-game contexts” (Werbach and Hunter, 2012);

•  “The application of game metaphors to real life tasks to influence behaviour, improve motivation and enhance engagement” (Marczewski, 2012); 

• “Using game techniques to make activities more engaging and fun” (Kim, 2011); 

• “The use of game attributes to drive game-like player behavior in a non-game 
context” (Wu, 2011); 

• “Taking game mechanics and applying to other web properties to increase engagement” (Terrill, 2008);

   

Other definitions from the academia are:

•  “Incorporating game elements into a non-gaming software application to increase user experience and engagement” (Domínguez et al., 2013);

• “A form of service packaging where a core service is enhanced by a rules-based service system that provides feedback and interaction mechanisms to the user with an aim to facilitate and support the users’ overall value creation” (Huotari and Hamari, 2011);

• “The use of game mechanics, dynamics, and frameworks to promote desired behaviors” (Lee and Hammer, 2011);

• “The use of game design elements in non-game contexts” (Deterding et al., 2011).

This shows that there is no consensus for a single and widely accepted definition for gamification (Werbach and Hunter, 2012). The first known definition in an academic paper is the one from Huotari and Hamari. In spite of all these different proposals, the definition that is more often found in academic papers is the one from Deterding et al. (2011). This definition is now widely used as the academic definition for the concept of gamification.

The definition from Domínguez et al. refers to non-gaming educative contexts. To conclude, some more definitions regardind education and training contexts:

• “The adition of elements commonly associated with games (e.g. game mechanics) to an educational or training program in order to make the learning process more engaging” (Landers and Callan, 2011); 

• “Using game-based mechanics, aesthetics and game thinking to engage people, motivate action, promote learning, and solve problems” (Kapp, 2012); 

• “Simple gameplay to support productive interaction for expected types of learners and instructors” (Rughinis, 2013); 

See also:

A Brief History of Gamification: Part I - The Origin

A Brief History of Gamification: Part II - The Name

References:

Deterding, S., Dixon, D., Khaled, R., and Nacke, L. (2011). From game design elements to gamefulness: Defining ”gamification". In Proceedings of the 15th International Academic MindTrek Conference: Envisioning Future Media Environments, MindTrek ’11, pages 9–15, New York, NY, USA. ACM.

 Domínguez, A., Saenz-de Navarrete, J., de Marcos, L., Fernández-Sanz, L., Pagés, C., and Martínez-Herráiz, J. (2013). Gamifying learning experiences: Practical implications and outcomes. Computers and Education, 63(0):380–392. 

Duggan, C. and Shoup, K. (2013). Business Gamification for Dummies. John Wiley and Sons, Inc.  

Johnson, L., Adams Becker, S., Estrada, V., and Freeman, A. (2014). NMC Horizon Report: 2014 Higher Education Edition. Technical report, Austin, Texas: The New Media Consortium. 

Kapp, K. (2012). The Gamification of Learning and Instruction: Game-based Methods and Strategies for Training and Education. Pfeiffer. 

Kim, A. (2011). Smart gamification: Designing the player journey [video].

Huotari, K. and Hamari, J. (2011). Gamification: from the perspective of service marketing. In Proc. CHI 2011 Workshop Gamification. 

Landers, R. and Callan, R. (2011). Casual social games as serious games: The psychology of gamification in undergraduate education and employee training. Serious Games and Edutainment Applications.

Lee, J. and Hammer, J. (2011). Gamification in education: What, how, why bother? Academic Exchange Quarterly, 15(2):2.

Marczewski, A. (2012). Gamification: A Simple Introduction. Marczewski, A.

Rughinis, R. (2013). Gamification for productive interaction reading and working with the gamification debate in education. In Proceedings of the Information Systems and Technologies (CISTI), 8th Iberian Conference on Information Systems and Technologies.

Terrill, B. (2008). My coverage of lobby of the social gaming summit   
Werbach, K. and Hunter, D. (2012). For the Win: How Game Thinking Can Revolutionize Your Business. Wharton Digital Press. 

Wu, M. (2011). What is gamification, really? [web log message] 

Zichermann, G. and Linder, J. (2013). The Gamification Revolution. McGraw-Hill Education. 

gEducation Workshop: Call for Papers

The gEducation Workshop - How Gamification is changing the future of Education will be held in Barcelona, on the Gamification World Congress. The gEducation Workshop will be on Saturday, May 24, 2014 (9:00am - 1:30pm).  

Topics of Interest:

    •    Tools for education
    •    Gamification in education
    •    Techniques and strategies
    •    Frameworks
    •    Collaborative learning
    •    Innovative methodologies
    •    Success stories
    •    User experiences and gamification in the clasrooms
    •    Management of gamified classrooms
    •    Useful resources for educators
    •    Gamification for different learning levels
    •    Styles of gamfication in educational environment
    •    E-learning

Important Dates:

    •    Submission deadline: April 14
    •    Notifications: May 1
    •    Workshop: May 24

Computers in Human Behavior - Special Issue on Gamification: Call for Submissions

Call for submissions to Computers in Human Behavior - Special Issue on Gamification: Gameful Design, Research, and Applications.

Following the conference on Gamification 2013: Gameful Design, Research, and Applications (see the conference videos here), the conference organizers and editors of this special issue invite researchers to submit contributions on all aspects of gamification to this special issue of Computers in Human Behavior. See this other post, with a link to the Proceedings of Gamification 2013.

Gamification uses game design to make a system that primarily supports non-game tasks more fun, engaging, and motivating. We invite a wide variety of high-quality research papers into our special issue. We seek to understand the research necessary for increasingly effective implementation of,gamification in business, health, education andmentertainment. We welcome substantial research studies of gamification successes and failures, unanswered questions about gamification, gamification metrics and processes, methods of gamification commercialization and more.

This special issue aims gamification researchers interested in - but not limited to - the following fields:

• Game Design
• Human-Computer Interaction
• Psychology
• Computer Science and Informatics
• Game Studies
• Education
• User Experience and Interaction Design
• Social Sciences and Humanities (e.g., digital humanities,
  communication research, sociology)

Special Issue Editors:

• Lennart Nacke, University of Ontario Institute of Technology
• Sebastian Deterding, Rochester Institute of Technology
• Kevin Harrigan, University of Waterloo
• Neil Randall, University of Waterloo

Important dates:

• May 30, 2014: Submission deadline
• August 30, 2014: Notification back to authors
• April, 2015: Planned date of publication

Horizon Report 2014 - Higher Education Edition

The Horizon Report 2014 - Higher Education Edition has been released. This year's edition has a new format that now includes Key Trends Accelerating Higher Education Technology Adoption and Significant Challenges Impeding Higher Education Technology Adoption.

The 2014 six important developments in educational technology are listed in in the report's third section, Important Developments in Educational Technology for Higher Education:

Time-to-Adoption Horizon: One Year or Less

• Flipped Classroom
• Learning Analytics

Time-to-Adoption Horizon: Two to Three Years

• 3D Printing
• Games and Gamification

Time-to-Adoption Horizon: Four to Five Years

• Quantified Self
• Virtual Assistants

Regarding last year's report, Quantified Self and Flipped Classrooms are new. Games and Gamification is kept on the "Two to Three Years" horizon. This is what the report says about it:

"The games culture has grown to include a substantial proportion of the world’s population, with the age of the average gamer increasing with each passing year. As tablets and smartphones have proliferated, desktop and laptop computers, television sets, and gaming consoles are no longer the only way to connect with other players online, making game-play a portable activity that can happen in a diverse array of settings. Gameplay has long since moved on from solely being recreational and has found considerable traction in the military, business and industry, and increasingly, education as a useful training and motivation tool. While a growing number of educational institutions and programs are experimenting with game-play, there has also been increased attention surrounding gamification — the integration of gaming elements, mechanics, and frameworks into non-game situations and scenarios. Businesses have embraced gamification as a way to design incentive programs that engage employees through rewards, leader boards, and badges, often with a mobile component. Although more nascent than in military or industry settings, the gamification of education is gaining support among educators who recognize that effectively designed games can stimulate large gains in productivity and creativity among learners."

About the Quantified Self trend, the report mentions that:

"People have always demonstrated interest in learning about themselves by tracking and measuring their behaviors and activities. Students already spend time in formal classroom settings gathering data about themselves or research topics. Quantified self technologies tap into this interest in the form of mobile apps, wearable devices, and cloud-based services that make the data collection process much easier."

The Quantified Self movement can benefit from gamification. In fact, if people are able to track and measure their behaviors, adding the proper game elements, they can be motivated to improve those behaviors, increase engagement in activities promoting those behaviors and change undesirable behaviors. This is the all idea behind gamification. And Education can benefit from both trends: gamification and the quantified self.

In this post published on Gamifeye, four approaches were mentioned to collecting data in gamified systems. Quantified self with gamification is the second approach, "using some external device". In Education they are also connected to Learning Analytics.

Post in Gamifeye - Recap: Gamification in Education in 2013

My fourth contribution to Gamifeye: Recap: Gamification in Education in 2013. This post highlights some of the most important things around the research on gamification of education that happened in 2013.

Again, many thanks to Sam Geuter, the man behind Gamifeye.

See the other contributions:

• Post em Gamifeye: "Education and Training: From Game-Based Learning to Gamification (October, 2012);

• Post em Gamifeye: "How Gamification Can Drive Behavioural Change" (November, 2012); 

• Post em Gamifeye: Four Approaches to Collecting Data in Gamified Systems (February, 2013).

Paper in the Special Issue of eLearning Papers on PLE

I have a new paper on my proposal for a gamification framework. It was published on november, 19, in the Special Issue of eLearning Papers on Personal Learning Environments (issue nº 35). The paper is co-authored with Rebeca Redondo (University of Vigo), Ana Vilas (University of Vigo) and Ademar Aguiar (University of Porto).

The paper, A gamification framework to improve participation in social learning environments, describes a gamification framework applied to the integration of game elements in Social Learning Environments. The framework is being applied in Schoooools.com, a Social Learning Environment for K6.

by Jorge Simões

This paper presents a gamification framework applied to the integration of game elements in Social Learning Environments. The framework is being applied to a K6 Social Learning Environment leading to a gamified system. With this gamified system it is expected to achieve a raise in the motivation to use the platform with students becoming more loyal users. It is also expected that they will be deeper involved and engaged in educational activities supported by the environment. The proposed gamification framework includes architecture for a gamified system and a guide to help the development of gamified activities.

Authors: Jorge Simões, Rebeca Redondo, Ana Vilas, Ademar Aguiar

Publication Date: Nov 19, 2013

Publication Name: eLearning Papers on Personal Learning Environments, issue 3

Research Interests:

E-learning, Social learning environments, and Gamification

See also this post - PLE and Smart Cities - from Ilona Buchem, one of the guest editors of this special issue of eLearning Papers.

A New Karl Kapp's Gamification Book

Another gamification book, authored by Karl Kapp will be available by mid November: The Gamification of Learning and Instruction Fieldbook: Ideas into Practice. It follows the other Kapp's book on gamification, published in 2012: The Gamification of Learning and Instruction: Game-based Methods and Strategies for Training and Education (see this post).

Following Karl Kapp's earlier book The Gamification of Learning and Instruction, this Fieldbook provides a step-by-step approach to implementing the concepts from the Gamification book with examples, tips, tricks, and worksheets to help a learning professional or faculty member put the ideas into practice. The Online Workbook, designed largely for students using the original book as a textbook, includes quizzes, worksheets and fill-in-the-blank areas that will help a student to better understand the ideas, concepts and elements of incorporating gamification into learning.

Is is allready possible to preorder the book at Amazon (paperback). Kindle edition is available.