Browsing by Subject "Gamification"

Now showing 1 - 4 of 4
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    Embrace Failure, Emphasize Practice: Bringing Gamification into the Language Classroom
    (Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research, 2016-04-08) Swanfeldt-Stout, Erica
    Gamification incentivizes individual learning, promotes greater learner autonomy, and places an emphasis on objective completion by making learning engaging and relevant for students. Gamification is the application of game design elements in non-game contexts with the aim of making something ordinary both fun and rewarding. Components of gamification include accumulative grading, do overs, badges, levels, and sometimes leaderboards. In the classroom, this approach provides a learning environment built to use specific calibration that bridges the gap between what the student knows and what they need to learn. Beyond maintaining the zone of proximal development, this approach fosters persistence by embracing failure. Students are given the chance to redo tasks, thereby turning a failed attempt into an opportunity for success by examining what went wrong and attempting the task again. This is especially important in language classrooms where students’ uptake of the target language is shown to be facilitated by their own language production, regardless of immediate accuracy, because mistakes are viewed as learning opportunities. Beyond the classroom, this approach offers a real-world application to problem-solving and promotes practice as a learning exercise.
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    Explore the relations between personality and gamification
    (2018-01-22) Jia, Yuan; Bolchini, Davide; Voida, Stephen; MacDorman, Karl; Defazio, Joseph
    Successful gamification motivates users to engage in systems using game-like experiences. However, a one-size-fits-all approach to gamification is often unsuccessful; prior studies suggest that personality serves as a key differentiator in the effectiveness of the approach. To advance the understanding of personality differences and their influence on users’ behavior and motivation in gamification, this dissertation is comprised of three studies that: 1) explore the relationships among individuals’ personality traits and preferences for different gamification features through an online survey; 2) investigate how people with different personality traits respond to the motivational affordances in a gamified application over a period of time through a diary study; and 3) reveal how individuals respond differentially to different kinds of leaderboard experiences based on their leaderboard rankings, the application domain, and the individuals’ personality traits through their responses to 9 dynamic leaderboards. The results from the first study show that extraversion and emotional stability are the two primary personality traits that differentiate users’ preferences for gamification. Among the 10 types of motivational affordances, extraverts are more likely to be motivated by Points, Levels, and Leaderboards. However, the results from the second (diary) study indicate that, after the first week, extraverts’ preferences for Points decreased. The motivation effects of Points and Leaderboards changed over the course of using the gamified application. The results from the third study confirm the findings from the first two studies about extraversion and revealed that ranking and domain differences are also effective factors in users’ experiences of Leaderboards in gamification. Design guidelines for gamification are presented based on the results of each of the three studies. Based on a synthesis of the results from these three studies, this dissertation proposes a conceptual model for gamification design. The model describes not only the impact of personality traits, domain differences, and users’ experience over time, but also illustrates the importance of considering individual differences, application context, and the potential significance of user persistence in gamification design. This research contributes to the HCI and gamification communities by uncovering factors that will affect the way that people respond to gamification systems, considered holistically.
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    Gamification of POCUS: Are Students Learning?
    (Department of Emergency Medicine, School of Medicine, University of California, Irvine, 2023-02-22) Russell, Frances M.; Lobo, Daniela; Herbert, Audrey; Kaine, Joshua; Pallansch, Jenna; Soriano, Pamela; Adame, J. D.; Ferre, Robinson M.; Emergency Medicine, School of Medicine
    Introduction: While gamification of point-of-care ultrasound (POCUS) is well received by learners, little is known about the knowledge gained from material taught during these events. We set out to determine whether a POCUS gamification event improved knowledge of interpretation and clinical integration of POCUS. Methods: This was a prospective observational study of fourth-year medical students who participated in a 2.5-hour POCUS gamification event consisting of eight objective-oriented stations. Each station had one to three learning objectives associated with the content taught. Students completed a pre-assessment; they then participated in the gamification event in groups of three to five per station and subsequently completed a post-assessment. Differences between pre- and post-session responses were matched and analyzed using Wilcoxon signed-rank test and Fisher's exact test. Results: We analyzed data from 265 students with matched pre- and post-event responses; 217 (82%) students reported no to little prior POCUS experience. Most students were going into internal medicine (16%) and pediatrics (11%). Knowledge assessment scores significantly improved from pre- to post-workshop, 68% vs 78% (P=0.04). Self-reported comfort with image acquisition, interpretation, and clinical integration all significantly improved from pre- to post-gamification event (P<0.001). Conclusion: In this study we found that gamification of POCUS, with clear learning objectives, led to improved student knowledge of POCUS interpretation, clinical integration, and self-reported comfort with POCUS.
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    HamkeRun: Mobile infoVis app towards sustainable motivation in a context of running
    (2015-05) Moon, Sung Pil; Bolchini, Davide; Pfaff, Mark; Rand, Kevin; Voida, Stephen
    According to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, less than half of all adults in the US meet basic physical activity guidelines. Physical activity can help not just improve physical and mental health but also reduce the risk of heart disease and some cancers. Researchers and companies have tried to investigate the use of modern technologies to motivate people to increase and maintain physical activities. However, in spite of these efforts, there are criticisms. Those include low dietary effectiveness of the tools, lack of sustainable effects in the long-term, and proof of effectiveness only shown in laboratory settings. To overcome these limitations, first, the author developed a framework of overarching motivation theories and HCI factors and contextualized it within the running domain. Second, the author has developed a mobile application called HamkeRun within this framework, using the concepts of information visualization, gamification, and social grouping to increase a user’s motivation to run more frequently. Third, the HamkeRun application was empirically tested through a two-month-long longitudinal experiment and follow-up interviews. The results showed that the single runner type showed significant increases in the levels of their external motivation (motivational effect of the HamkeRun application), internal motivation and satisfaction, while the team runner type showed significant increases only in internal motivation. In addition, motivational effects were also different depending on the runners’ behavior change stage. Runners at the maintenance stage showed significant increases in external motivation, internal motivation, satisfaction, and total number of running activities performed during the study. Although action stage runners showed significant increase in internal motivation, female runners at the action stage showed significant decrease in their external motivation. Gamification greatly influenced increases of external motivation, internal motivation and total number of actual activities. Although both male and female runners showed increased internal motivation, significant increase in external motivation was only found in male runners. The dissertation closes with a series of design guidelines for application developers and designers which may help develop motivational tools in other health-related domains.