Gamification in Education

Dear Colleagues,

“Gamification in Education” is the topic of this Special Issue. In particular, we want to address in more depth how deeper gamification or game thinking can be applied in order to gamify educational content in a more personalized and adaptive manner.

Some of the latest literature reviews (Majuri et al., 2018; Hakak et al. 2019) demonstrate that gamification, in most studied applications, has not gone much beyond the basic application of PBL (Points, Badges, Leaderboards and Levels). There may be several problems with this approach. As an example, leaderboards may not be appreciated equally by all players and research is missing on how various gamification techniques in general may affect different learners (Berkling et al., 2013; Alomari et al., 2019). Maybe a teacher’s blog entry best describes the problem with shallow gamification as disrespectful towards the child that is already motivated through learning:

“So the real problem with gamification of learning is that it’s disrespectful. It’s a dirty trick. It says to children: “you don’t want to learn, so I have to force you learn, but I don’t really want to face that idea or seem mean or get into a battle with you, so instead I’m going to trick you into it.” Children deserve better than that.“ (Montessori Cosmos).

In fact, deeper gamification or game thinking involves mechanisms that are more meaningful to the players and their motivation by providing competence, relatedness and autonomy through game thinking (Niemiec et al., 2009; Pink, 2011). As a consequence, such a learning experience will be personal. Such applications will probably need to look at player (learner) analytics, effectiveness, feedback, adaptivity of content and rewards that may change across players or their own lifecycle within the game.

We will have to rethink the reward system away from points and badges towards content related capabilities. A concrete example I like to use is to award the student with the “-“ sign, but only after they have fully mastered the use of the “+” sign rather than new clothing for an avatar, which carries no relation to the task at hand. If you think back of Angry Birds, the reward in the next level is increased difficulty and sometimes additional capabilities, such as new birds with more complex physics behavior. In classical shooter games, the rewards are not points but weapons that allow you to perform more difficult tasks. This sort of game-thinking design can be applied more heavily in “gamification”. When we match these mechanics with the gamer analytics, we may succeed in personalized and adaptive gamified learning systems that move beyond the basic current understanding we have of gamification in terms of PLBs.

With this introduction, I would like to motivate you to submit your work to this journal to help progress our knowledge in the area of deeper (or more personal) gamification interface design. We encourage authors to submit original research articles, case studies, reviews, theoretical and critical perspectives, and viewpoint articles on multimodal technologies and learning.

• Majuri, J., Koivisto, J., & Hamari, J. (2018). Gamification of education and learning: A review of empirical literature. In Proceedings of the 2nd International GamiFIN Conference, GamiFIN 2018. CEUR-WS.
• Hakak, S., Noor, N. F. M., Ayub, M. N., Affal, H., Hussin, N., & Imran, M. (2019). Cloud-assisted gamification for education and learning–Recent advances and challenges. Computers & Electrical Engineering, 74, 22-34.
• Berkling, K., & Thomas, C. (2013, September). Gamification of a Software Engineering course and a detailed analysis of the factors that lead to it's failure. In 2013 International Conference on Interactive Collaborative Learning (ICL) (pp. 525-530). IEEE.
• Alomari, I., Al-Samarraie, H., & Yousef, R. (2019). The Role of Gamification Techniques in Promoting Student Learning: A Review and Synthesis. Journal of Information Technology Education: Research, 18, 395-417.
• Niemiec, C. P., & Ryan, R. M. (2009). Autonomy, competence, and relatedness in the classroom: Applying self-determination theory to educational practice. Theory and research in Education, 7(2), 133-144.
• Pink, D. H. (2011). Drive: The surprising truth about what motivates us. Penguin.
• Montessori Cosmos (visited October 2, 2019): https://www.montessoricosmos.org/blog/2018/9/14/on-gamification-of-learning

Prof. Dr. Kay Berkling
Guest Editor

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• gamification
• game‐based learning
• technology enhanced learning
• engagement
• motivation
• game design elements
• adaptivity
• cognition
• interaction