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GamiCSM: relating education, culture and gamification - a link between worlds
... Acestea sunt câteva din întrebările la care încercăm să răspundem în acest articol, în urma analizei literaturii de specialitate. Toda et al., 2020). De evidențiat și factori cu potențial motivațional dublu: feedback-ul rapid (care poate declanșa și motivația intrinsecă prin sentimentul de realizare în raport cu propriul progres sau cu performanța celorlalți), posibilitatea de a coopera (de a crea "triburi" care luptă pentru aceleași obiective, care se sprijină, care împărtășesc succesul -și prin asta pot oferi ideea de sens, legătură) sau crearea unui mediu competitiv, cu valențe pozitive doar în cazul anumitor persoane sau grupuri, deoarece caracteristicile personale și culturale sunt importante (Araújo, 2016; Furdu, Tomozei & Kose, 2017; Toda et al., 2020). ...
... Aspecte generale Printre recomandările cu privire la gamificare se numără și adaptarea la specificitatea culturală, deoarece înțelegerea legăturii cultură-gamificare poate oferi direcții de ameliorare a experienței educaționale. Totuși, literatura de specialitate ne indică faptul că variabila cultură este neglijată sau puțin explorată în cadrul studiilor alocate acestei tematici (Toda et al., 2020). Atitudinea față de gamificare (atât a studenților, cât și a profesorilor), schemele de joc, modul de utilizare a structurilor ludice, comportamentul în timpul jocului sunt doar câteva elemente pe care le putem lega de specificitatea culturală, în general, de anumite dimensiuni culturale, în special. ...
... preocuparea scăzută pentru adecvarea la profilul cultural al utilizatorilor(Toda et al., 2020). Efectele gamificării asupra performanței în învățare variază în funcție de context și de modul de aplicare (Prieto-Andreu, Gómez-Escalonilla-Torrijos & Said-Hung, 2022). ...
Today's world comes with numerous challenges, especially in the educational space. New technologies and the virtual environment bring changes in values, attitudes, and behaviors, creating the premises for redefining the educational process on the one hand, and on the other hand, generating interest in the use of game elements in non-play contexts through gamification. The specialized literature supports this orientation by presenting the benefits and the problems that need to be addressed for better integration of gamification in university environments. One of the important issues highlighted is the need to adapt to cultural specificity, which is related to resistance to change, the nature of motivation, and the degree of appreciation for cooperation or competition, among other factors.
... In their study [Rodrigues and Isotani 2023] they tell us about the importance of personalizing gamification according to users and content to be addressed within the school context, so that there is better engagement and students feel more motivated to carry out the proposed activities. It is worth mentioning that [Toda et al. 2020a] in their study recommends that to achieve positive effects it is necessary to follow good design practices, with a broad focus on the characteristics of users and their cultural context to avoid demotivation and unwanted behavior. ...
... However, despite the mishaps encountered before, during, and after this type of work in the classroom, we were able to notice the students' interest in this type of activity, which is a little out of the ordinary, from dialogued classes, blackboard, and activities in the notebook. As we saw in related works [Toda et al. 2020a]; [Rodrigues and Isotani 2023] e [Toda et al. 2020b] the teacher must take into account the reality of the students, their habits, and previous knowledge. In this report, we seek to meet all these needs, so that there is a better use and engagement of the students. ...
Gamification in education makes learning engaging, motivating, and interactive, stimulating active participation and skill development through game elements. In this context, this experiential report aims to describe and reflect on the use of games as an aid in the literacy process in the early years of elementary school, and how the use of the digital tool Flippity can contribute to this process. Besides that, we conducted a bibliographic analysis on the topic to enrich the reflection. The study reveals positive outcomes of using games in children’s literacy education, fostering enjoyable learning experiences. Based on these findings, we offer six recommendations to enhance gamification in literacy teaching to promote effective learning for students.
... It is this aspect of 'culture' that we will seek to investigate within the rest of this paper. Recently, culture's importance to gamification has come to the fore [2,24,19]. In spite of this surge in interest, according to [19], most existing gamification studies that address education and culture are focused on language learning, rather than on understanding how culture can impact on gamification design. ...
... Recently, culture's importance to gamification has come to the fore [2,24,19]. In spite of this surge in interest, according to [19], most existing gamification studies that address education and culture are focused on language learning, rather than on understanding how culture can impact on gamification design. ...
Gamification applied to education could impact positively (or negatively) students’ psychological and cognitive aspects, such as motivation, engagement and learning performance. Nevertheless, the perceptions of education professionals and their concerns about implicit biases and ethics that emerge from applying gamification to support learning has not been widely explored. Thus, we conducted a qualitative study that aims to identify gamification potential biases and ethical concerns, from teachers’ perspectives, in the Brazilian context. We designed a survey answered by 61 Brazilian teachers, who had not used gamification before - even thought they were aware of its potential benefits. Our results point out that social aspects, difficulties in planning and evaluation, psychological and behavioral impacts, and privacy of students are some of the main concerns related to ethics and biases. This paper contribution focused on providing a list of potential biases and ethical concerns to consider when designing and applying gamification in education.
... It is this aspect of 'culture' that we will seek to investigate within the rest of this paper. Recently, culture's importance to gamification has come to the fore [2,24,19]. In spite of this surge in interest, according to [19], most existing gamification studies that address education and culture are focused on language learning, rather than on understanding how culture can impact on gamification design. ...
... Recently, culture's importance to gamification has come to the fore [2,24,19]. In spite of this surge in interest, according to [19], most existing gamification studies that address education and culture are focused on language learning, rather than on understanding how culture can impact on gamification design. ...
Research on tailored gamification has shifted from analysing single students' characteristics (e.g. gender or behavioural profiles) to multiple characteristics and how they are influenced by gamification (e.g. context and system log usage). Yet, few studies have been conducted that are concerned with culture, which influences many of the students' characteristics and, consequently, their learning performance. In order to provide a better gamified experience, it is important to understand culture and how it impacts on students' perceived importance of gamification elements, so these elements can be adapted to specific cultures. To this end, we conducted an exploratory study using Association Rule Mining, to explore how the cultural landscape (country) influences the students' behaviour and perceived importance of gamification elements in educational environments. We collected and analysed data (N = 1296) from two different countries, Brazil (N = 428) and the United States (N = 868) and identified significant differences between the perceived importance of some gamification elements.
... Cultural considerations should also be included since they may have an impact on how students respond to certain game components. Certain traits, such as a competitive spirit, are more acceptable in some cultures than others [19]. ...
Universities are trying to adapt the education process for students, who may benefit from different approaches to learning. Gamification is an example; it may provide an opportunity for practical testing of the acquired knowledge and valuable feedback on their weaknesses and strengths. With an element of competition, it may further boost students' enthusiasm for learning and their self-confidence. Researchers proposed many ways to implement gamification in the education process. This paper proposes a newly developed information system and gamification model combined with the previously developed Automated Programming Assessment System (APAS) for evaluating SQL solutions at Algebra University. During learning, APAS contributes by providing rich and immediate feedback to students. The first goal is to enhance student engagement during the academic year, and the second goal is to help students who need to reenroll in the course due to their previous failure. To increase their chances, they need to prepare more whenever they are willing to learn, often physically outside the university. The proposed system is used at Algebra University in the Introduction to Databases course with the aim of empowering students, but the benefits could also be significant for the university, which is interested in minimizing the student dropout rate.
... Gamification -known as the use of game elements outside of games -is used to drive user engagement and improve user experience in a wide array of fields and subjects, such as health, [1,2], social media [3], and education [4,5]. Previous research [6] indicates that gamification is more effective when the gameful design 1 of a system accounts for user context, personality, and culture [8,9]. Some researchers affirm that people are motivated or demotivated by different game elements according to their ''gamer or user type'' [10][11][12]. ...
In gamification, personalization is considered an important field of research since it can improve user engagement and motivation. Particularly, effective gamified learning needs to strike a balance between gameful design that promotes engagement and does not negatively affect content comprehension and absorption. The existing traditional user-type questionnaires approaches are time-consuming and intrusive, hampering the user’s focus. Previous research in gamification demonstrated how to automate player profile creation through log file analysis of gameful systems instead of traditional approaches, however, psychological archetypes and motivational groups can simplify the process of collecting data to achieve a balanced level of personalization for gamified systems, which are grounded on the user’s profile and preferences which can help with their immersion. To attend to the needs of a wide range of fields that introduce gamification to systems that are not classified as games, a new ludic approach was created to define user types based on user interaction using symbolic images. In this exploratory research, we tested this approach in two card-sorting studies ( N = 35
and N = 19
). Our results show that the images can be used to predict the users’ archetypes and motivational groups accurately. Thus, we contribute with validating an image-based user type classification method that is easier to deploy in systems that do not aim to behave as a game but are looking to reap the benefits of personalizing a user’s content and gameful experience where relevant. Our second contribution is delivering guidelines to replicate this validation method to other existing approaches. We expect that with this guideline, we facilitate personalization with other user typologies without disrupting the gameful experience.
Gamification serves various purposes. In the context of education, it can be used to create visually appealing and engaging activities for students. However, as experts have noted, simply gamifying the content of a class may not be enough to improve student learning. To develop an approach that would enable us to gamify both class content and instructional design, we started a new project. As our initial step, we consulted relevant literature. Drawing inspiration from our findings, we formulated a methodology named GamiClass. To assess its potential, we held a workshop where we taught university professors how to utilise it, seeking their input. Subsequently, with an enhanced version, we designed an undergraduate Human–Computer Interaction (HCI) course. Finally, we conducted a randomised, controlled trial making use of a third iteration of the methodology. The results indicate that both educators and students benefit from its implementation. In this paper, we present our findings, discuss the pros and cons of our integral approach to gamifying classes (i.e., gamifying both content and instructional design), and outline our future work aimed at consolidating its effectiveness.
Despite recent advances in the personalization of education, it is still unknown how different kinds of personalization affect students' experiences. To advance this literature, in this article, we present an experimental study with 307 participants investigating the effects of gender stereotype-based interfaces (in terms of colors and avatars stereotypes) on users' flow experience (i.e., challenge-skill balance, merging of action and awareness, clear goals, feedback, concentration, control, loss of self-consciousness, and autotelic experience), and performance in a gamified educational system. The main results indicate that gender stereotype-based interfaces affect users' action-awareness merging, however, do not affect users' performance and overall flow experience. We contribute with the basis for new studies and challenge thorough future research attempts.
Digital games have become part of the daily life of a large part of the world population, reaching audiences of different ages, genders, and cultures. Games are also becoming an increasingly explored research topic in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), and several studies have sought to deepen the knowledge about players, identifying individual differences. Although the literature is rich in works that typify and classify players, the lack of objective comparisons can make it difficult to adopt such types to support game design or future research. Thus, this research investigates players' taxonomies and typologies regarding their motivations, behavior, and personality characteristics, analyzing how they explore these traits. We conducted a systematic mapping of the literature and analyzed 19 studies that propose or update players' types, observing how they explore the above mentioned traits. The main contribution of this paper is to offer an overview of the identified taxonomies and typologies, comparing them and mapping their attributes and applications. Such knowledge is a tool for designing games and gamified systems and can support game designers to promote engagement and motivation in complementary ways in their games. It also allows researchers and practitioners to compose a multidimensional view of the different players' types.
Teachers and learners who search for learning materials in open educational resources (OER) repositories greatly benefit from feedback and reviews left by peers who have activated these resources in their class. Such feedback can also fuel social-based ranking algorithms and recommendation systems. However, while educational users appreciate the recommendations made by other teachers, they are not highly motivated to provide such feedback by themselves. This situation is common in many consumer applications that rely on users’ opinions for personalisation. A possible solution that was successfully applied in several other domains to incentivise active participation is gamification. This paper describes for the first time the application of a comprehensive cutting-edge gamification taxonomy, in a user-centred participatory-design process of an OER system for Physics, PeTeL, used throughout Israel. Physics teachers were first involved in designing gamification features based on their preferences, helping shape the gamification mechanisms likely to enhance their motivation to provide reviews. The results informed directly the implementation of two gamification elements that were implemented in the learning environment, with a second experiment evaluating their actual effect on teachers’ behaviour. After a long-term, real-life pilot of two months, teachers’ response rate was measured and compared to the prior state. The results showed a statistically significant effect, with a 4X increase in the total amount of recommendations per month, even when taking into account the ‘Covid-pandemic effect’.
Gamification is increasingly becoming a pertinent aspect of any UI and UX design. However, a canonical dearth in research and application of gamification has been related to the role of individual differences in susceptibility to gamification and its varied designs. To address this gap, this study reviews the extant corpus of research on tailored gamification (42 studies). The findings of the review indicate that most studies on the field are mostly focused on user modeling for a future personalization, adaptation, or recommendation of game elements. This user model usually contains the users’ preferences of play (i.e., player types), and is mostly applied in educational settings. The main contributions of this paper are a standardized terminology of the game elements used in tailored gamification, the discussion on the most suitable game elements for each users’ characteristic, and a research agenda including dynamic modeling, exploring multiple characteristics simultaneously, and understanding the effects of other aspects of the interaction on user experience.
One of the main goals of gamification in educational settings is to increase student motivation and engagement. To facilitate the design of gamified educational systems, in recent years, studies have proposed various approaches (e.g., methodologies, frameworks and models). One of the main problems, however, is that most of these approaches are theoretical, and do not provide a proof-of-concept. This paper advances the state of the art by providing a practical way to help implement this kind of system. In this study, we present, for the first time, how one can apply gamification elements in a learning system using the Design Sprint method, to guide designers and developers on replicating this process. Additionally, as starting point, we use a taxonomy composed of 21 game elements, proposed to be used within learning environments, organised into five game element categories, according to their goal/usage. Our main contribution is to present how to systematically implement the gamification elements focused on educational ends, which is of special value to practitioners, designers and developers.
Abstract Literature can sometimes tend to present context and culture almost as synonyms. This creates ambiguity, which can complicate the consideration of contextual and cultural variables in instructional design, learning, and teaching. From an ontological point of view, some clarification of these two concepts is essential as each may influence learning and teaching in different ways. Moreover, since context and culture are interconnected to a certain degree, one may influence the other. It is crucial to make a clear distinction between these two concepts in the knowledge models used in intelligent tutoring systems and distance education systems if we want to facilitate (1) their consideration in pedagogical scenarios, and (2) the accumulation of knowledge about different contexts and cultures. This article offers an interpretation of the difference between these two concepts, presenting context as a substrate of culture. Contextual issues in the learning ecology are also discussed, based on this distinction.
Selecting gamification elements suitable for specific players (personalization) has been sought to improve the impacts of Gamified Educational Systems (GES). However, the lack of context might be a factor on the inconsistent results of those approaches. To address this lack, we introduce a method for personalizing GES based on learning activities types. The assumption is that selecting gamification elements for specific types of learning activities has the potential to improve GES impact on users by considering the context of each activity and, thus, contributing to their learning process. We describe how to apply our approach, how it differs from user-based methods, as well as discuss three cases of application and challenges yet to be tackled.
Gamification has been widely employed in the educational domain over the past eight years when the term became a trend. However, the literature states that gamification still lacks formal definitions to support the design of gamified strategies. This paper aims to create a taxonomy for the game elements, based on gamification experts' opinions. After a brief review from existing work, we extract first the game elements from the current state of the art, and then evaluate them via a survey with 19 gamification and education experts. The resulting taxonomy taxonomy included the description of 21 game elements and their quantitative and qualitative evaluation by the experts. Overall, the proposed taxonomy was in general well accepted by most of the experts. They also suggested expanding it with the inclusion of Narrative and Storytelling game elements. Thus, the main contribution of this paper is proposing a new, confirmed taxonomy to standardise the terminology used to define the game elements as a mean to design and deploy gamification strategies in the educational domain.
Gamification frameworks can aid in gamification planning for education. Most frameworks, however, do not provide ways to select, relate or recommend how to use game elements , to gamify a certain educational task. Instead, most provide a "one-size-fits-all" approach covering all learners, without considering different user characteristics, such as gender. Therefore, this work aims to adopt a data-driven approach to provide a set of game element recommendations , based on user preferences, that could be used by teachers and instructors to gamify learning activities. We analysed data from a novel survey of 733 people (male=569 and female=164), collecting information about user preferences regarding game elements. Our results suggest that the most important rules were based on four (out of nineteen) types of game elements: Objectives, Levels, Progress and Choice. From the perspective of user gender, for the female sample, the most interesting rule associated Objectives with Progress, Badges and Information (confidence=0.97), whilst the most interesting rule for the male sample associated also Objectives with Progress, Renovation and Choice (confidence=0.94). These rules and our descriptive analysis provides recommendations on how game elements can be used in educational scenarios.
Gamification has a great number of studies in the education area since the emergence of the term. However, there is a lack of primary and secondary studies that explore the negative effects that gamification may have on learners, and lack of studies that analyze the gamification design that are linked to those negative effects. Based on this premise, we aim at answering the following research question “What are the negative effects that can occur in gamification when applied to educational contexts?”. We seek to answer this question by analyzing the negative effects that are associated to gamification and the gamified learning design that are linked with them. To answer this question, we conducted a systematic mapping study to identify these negative effects. Based on the studies that were analyzed, we identified and mapped 4 negative effects and their gameful design. Loss of Performance was the most occurring effect and Leaderboard the most cited game design element, among other 11 elements. Moreover, elements and effects were linked in order to identify how these elements may have influenced on these outcomes. Based on our results, we found out that the game design may lead to a negative impact. For instance, Leaderboards are strongly associated to many negative effects mapped in this work. This result is corroborated by the psychology literature regarding ranking systems within learning environments. We believe our work may be useful to guide gamification instructors and specialists to avoid those negative effects in education contexts, by avoiding some game design elements settings.
Today, our reality and lives are increasingly game-like, not only because games have become a pervasive part of our lives, but also because activities, systems and services are increasingly gamified. Gamification refers to designing information systems to afford similar experiences and motivations as games do, and consequently, attempting to affect user behavior. In recent years, popularity of gamification has skyrocketed and manifested in growing numbers of gamified applications, as well as a rapidly increasing amount of research. However, this vein of research has mainly advanced without an agenda, theoretical guidance or a clear picture of the field.
To make the picture more coherent, we provide a comprehensive review of the gamification research (N = 819 studies) and analyze the research models and results in empirical studies on gamification. While the results in general lean towards positive findings about the effectiveness of gamification, the amount of mixed results is remarkable. Furthermore, education, health and crowdsourcing as well as points, badges and leaderboards persist as the most common contexts and ways of implementing gamification. Concurrently, gamification research still lacks coherence in research models, and a consistency in the variables and theoretical foundations. As a final contribution of the review, we provide a comprehensive discussion, consisting of 15 future research trajectories, on future agenda for the growing vein of literature on gamification and gameful systems within the information system science field.
In spite of their effectiveness, learning environments often fail to engage users and end up under-used. Many studies show that gamification of learning environments can enhance learners' motivation to use learning environments. However, learners react differently to specific game mechanics and little is known about how to adapt gaming features to learners' profiles. In this paper, we propose a process for adapting gaming features based on a player model. This model is inspired from existing player typologies and types of gamification elements. Our approach is implemented in a learning environment with five different gaming features, and evaluated with 266 participants. The main results of this study show that, amongst the most engaged learners (i.e. learners who use the environment the longest), those with adapted gaming features spend significantly more time in the learning environment. Furthermore, learners with features that are not adapted have a higher level of amotivation. These results support the relevance of adapting gaming features to enhance learners' engagement, and provide cues on means to implement adaptation mechanisms.
Persuasive gameful systems are effective tools for motivating behaviour change. Research has shown that tailoring these systems to individuals can increase their efficacy; however, there is little knowledge on how to personalize them. We conducted a large-scale study of 543 participants to investigate how different gamification user types responded to ten persuasive strategies depicted in storyboards representing persuasive gameful health systems. Our results reveal that people's gamification user types play significant roles in the perceived persuasiveness of different strategies. People scoring high in the 'player' user type tend to be motivated by competition, comparison, cooperation, and reward while 'disruptors' are likely to be demotivated by punishment, goal-setting, simulation, and self-monitoring. 'Socialisers' could be motivated using any of the strategies; they are the most responsive to persuasion overall. Finally, we contribute to CHI research and practice by offering design guidelines for tailoring persuasive gameful systems to each gamification user type.
Culture is not a new concept within the social sciences. In fact, culture has been widely discussed for years to investigate how it has evolved and how it still affects human communication. The aim of this article is to introduce the concept of culture and illustrate its relevance in key theoretical discussions and debates in the social sciences. Also, it aims based on secondary research evidence to highlight how differing cultural factors affect learning and assessing in higher education. The paper concludes that it is essential for assessors to consider the unique cultural characteristics when assessing their students’ performance. This study contributes in the existing literature on the role of culture in education by focusing on assessment. It is one of very few studies which suggests that assessing students’ performance should not take place independent of cultural particularities and sets the ground for designing alternative, culturally responsive assessment tools.
Research has shown that social influence can be used to effect behavior change. However, research on the role culture plays in the effect of age and gender on social influence in persuasive technology is scarce. To address this, we investigate the effect of age and gender on the susceptibility of individuals to Competition, Reward , Social Comparison and Social Learning in individualist and collectivist cultures, using a sample of 360 participants from North America, Africa and Asia. Our results reveal that there are more significant differences between males and females and between younger and older people in collectivist cultures than individualist cultures. In individualist culture, we found that males and females differ with respect to Competition only, with males being more susceptible. However, in collectivist culture, we found males differ from females with respect to Reward and Competition, with males being more susceptible, while younger people differ from older people with respect to Competition, Social Comparison and Social Learning, with younger people be more susceptible. Our findings provide designers of gamified persuasive applications with empirical insights, including a number of guidelines, for tailoring to the individualist and collectivist cultures based on age and gender.
Gamification of education is a developing approach for increasing learners’ motivation and engagement by incorporating game design elements in educational environments. With the growing popularity of gamification and yet mixed success of its application in educational contexts, the current review is aiming to shed a more realistic light on the research in this field by focusing on empirical evidence rather than on potentialities, beliefs or preferences. Accordingly, it critically examines the advancement in gamifying education. The discussion is structured around the used gamification mechanisms, the gamified subjects, the type of gamified learning activities, and the study goals, with an emphasis on the reliability and validity of the reported outcomes. To improve our understanding and offer a more realistic picture of the progress of gamification in education, consistent with the presented evidence, we examine both the outcomes reported in the papers and how they have been obtained. While the gamification in education is still a growing phenomenon, the review reveals that (i) insufficient evidence exists to support the long-term benefits of gamification in educational contexts; (ii) the practice of gamifying learning has outpaced researchers’ understanding of its mechanisms and methods; (iii) the knowledge of how to gamify an activity in accordance with the specifics of the educational context is still limited. The review highlights the need for systematically designed studies and rigorously tested approaches confirming the educational benefits of gamification, if gamified learning is to become a recognized instructional approach.
Culture strongly influences people’s values, expectations, behavior, and even perceptions and cognitive reasoning. Although HCI researchers recognize culture as an important factor, the research about cultural issues and HCI needs to go further. This paper discusses why culture should not be viewed as a threat or something that is better to relegated to minor importance in Human-Computer Interaction, but that has a key role in the investigations and development of new theories, methods and techniques. In the light of the grand challenges prospected in GranDIHC-BR by the Brazilian HCI community, we explore some of the opportunities and challenges culture brought to HCI as a research area.
O que são dados abertos conectados? Qual o papel deles na construção da Web do futuro (i.e. Web dos dados)? E como podem ajudar a resolver problemas econômicos, sociais e de gestão? Conheça um pouco mais sobre o conceito de dados abertos conectados e as vantagens de criar um ecossistema para estruturação, disponibilização e consumo de dados no formato aberto. Saiba como utilizar os princípios conhecidos como “Sistema de 5 Estrelas” para classificar o grau de abertura dos dados disponíveis na Web.
Aprenda também um pouco sobre a área de Web Semântica, ontologias, modelagem de dados e padrões de compartilhamento de informação. Saiba quais são os métodos e padrões atualmente utilizados para o compartilhamento de metadados que dão significados aos dados da Web. E veja as tendências mais recentes no desenvolvimento de aplicações inteligentes que utilizam a semântica dos dados para geração de ferramentas que atendem às necessidades do mercado e da sociedade no século 21.
Espera-se que ao final da leitura deste livro o leitor:
Tenha uma visão geral sobre dados abertos conectados e suas potenciais aplicações.
Tenha também adquirido conhecimentos para modelar, publicar e consumir dados abertos.
Entenda o processo de disponibilização de dados de maneira estruturada usando ontologias.
Saiba mais sobre as diversas tecnologias da Web Semântica e suas potencialidades.
Utilize as tecnologias semânticas tanto para disseminação dos dados quanto para criação de aplicativos simples.
Gamification has drawn the attention of academics, practitioners and business professionals in domains as diverse as education, information studies, human-computer interaction, and health. As yet, the term remains mired in diverse meanings and contradictory uses, while the concept faces division on its academic worth, underdeveloped theoretical foundations, and a dearth of standardized guidelines for application. Despite widespread commentary on its merits and shortcomings, little empirical work has sought to validate gamification as a meaningful concept and provide evidence of its effectiveness as a tool for motivating and engaging users in non-entertainment contexts. Moreover, no work to date has surveyed gamification as a field of study from a human-computer studies perspective. In this paper, we present a systematic survey on the use of gamification in published theoretical reviews and research papers involving interactive systems and human participants. We outline current theoretical understandings of gamification and draw comparisons to related approaches, including alternate reality games (ARGs), games with a purpose (GWAPs), and gameful design. We present a multidisciplinary review of gamification in action, focusing on empirical findings related to purpose and context, design of systems, approaches and techniques, and user impact. Findings from the survey show that a standard conceptualization of gamification is emerging against a growing backdrop of empirical participants-based research. However, definitional subjectivity, diverse or unstated theoretical foundations, incongruities among empirical findings, and inadequate experimental design remain matters of concern. We discuss how gamification may to be more usefully presented as a subset of a larger effort to improve the user experience of interactive systems through gameful design. We end by suggesting points of departure for continued empirical investigations of gamified practice and its effects.
Immigrants entering the European Community face a range of challenges in adapting to and understanding the culture of their host nation. Failure to address these challenges can lead to isolation and difficulties integrating into the society of the host country, leading to fragmented communities and a range of social issues. As part of a comprehensive suite of services for immigrants, the European-funded Mobile Assistance for Social Inclusion and Empowerment of Immigrants with Persuasive Learning Technologies and Social Network Services (MASELTOV) project seeks to provide both practical tools and learning services via mobile devices, providing a readily usable resource for immigrants. In this workshop paper, the game-based learning aspect of the MASELTOV project is introduced, with the rationale behind its design presented. In doing so, the benefits and implications of mobile platforms and emergent data capture techniques for game-based learning are discussed, as are methods for putting engaging gameplay at the forefront of the experience whilst relying on rich data capture and analysis to provide an effective learning solution. Through comparison to several other projects, a number of recommendations are put forward for games deployed in contexts similar to that of MASELTOV: a focus on establishing a significant audience with which to conduct ethical research into efficacy, the need for robust pedagogical frameworks suited to the learning context, and the evolution of methods for data capture and analysis of player activity.
Knowledge Organization Systems (KOSs) are extensively used in the biomedical domain to support information sharing between software applications. KOSs are proposed covering different, but overlapping subjects, and mappings indicate the semantic relation between concepts from two KOSs. Over time, KOSs change as do the mappings between them. This can result from a new discovery or a revision of existing knowledge which includes corrections of concepts or mappings. Indeed, changes affecting KOS entities may force the underline mappings to be updated in order to ensure their reliability over time. To tackle this open research problem, we study how mappings are affected by KOS evolution. This article presents a detailed descriptive analysis of the impact that changes in KOS have on mappings. As a case study, we use the official mappings established between SNOMED CT and ICD-9-CM from 2009 to 2011. Results highlight factors according to which KOS changes in varying degrees influence the evolution of mappings.
In their classic cross-cultural study "Games in Culture," Roberts, Arth, and Bush (1959) delineated a three-category classification for games (i.e., physical skill, strategy, and chance) as well as a defini tion of games. Both the classification system and the definition have become anthropological standards. Roberts et al. also found that several variables correlated with the presence-absence of different game types. However, the sample that Roberts et al. used was relatively small (50 societies) and nonstandard. The purpose of this study is to replicate the Roberts et al. study using codes for games for the Standard Cross-Cultural Sample. In addition, minor exten sions of the results found by Roberts et al. are presented.
Over the last decade, 'user experience' (UX) became a buzzword in the field of human – computer interaction (HCI) and interaction design. As technology matured, interactive products became not only more useful and usable, but also fashionable, fascinating things to desire. Driven by the impression that a narrow focus on interactive products as tools does not capture the variety and emerging aspects of technology use, practitioners and researchers alike, seem to readily embrace the notion of UX as a viable alternative to traditional HCI. And, indeed, the term promises change and a fresh look, without being too specific about its definite meaning. The present introduction to the special issue on 'Empirical studies of the user experience' attempts to give a provisional answer to the question of what is meant by 'the user experience'. It provides a cursory sketch of UX and how we think UX research will look like in the future. It is not so much meant as a forecast of the future, but as a proposal – a stimulus for further UX research.
Recent years have seen a rapid proliferation of mass-market consumer software that takes inspiration from video games. Usually summarized as "gamification", this trend connects to a sizeable body of existing concepts and research in human-computer interaction and game studies, such as serious games, pervasive games, alternate reality games, or playful design. However, it is not clear how "gamification" relates to these, whether it denotes a novel phenomenon, and how to define it. Thus, in this paper we investigate "gamification" and the historical origins of the term in relation to precursors and similar concepts. It is suggested that "gamified" applications provide insight into novel, gameful phenomena complementary to playful phenomena. Based on our research, we propose a definition of "gamification" as the use of game design elements in non-game contexts.
One of the main problems facing 3D city modelling applications is lack of interoperability among various Building Information Models (BIM) and Geographic Information Systems (GIS) models. CityGML (representing a wide range of 3D urban objects) and IFC (representing a very detailed semantic model for buildings) are considered the most prominent semantic models in GIS and BIM, respectively, today. When integrating the two models, substantial difficulties may arise in transforming information from one to the other. Professionals from both domains have made significant efforts to integrate CityGML and IFC models for seeking useful common applications. However, most of these efforts use a unidirectional method (mostly from IFC to CityGML) for a conversion process. As a formal mapping between both domains is required, researchers have suggested that harmonising semantics is the best approach for such integration. In this paper, we focus on semantic integration of IFC and CityGML building models for bidirectional conversion. Both IFC and CityGML use different terminologies to describe the same domain. Additionally, there is a great heterogeneity in their semantics. This paper, therefore, propose more expressive reference ontology between IFC and CityGML semantic models and an intermediate Unified Building Modelled (UBM) is built. The result of the paper contributes, through the reference ontology, towards a formal mapping between IFC and CityGML ontologies that allows bidirectional conversion between them. It also contributes towards a design of meta-standard for 3D city modelling that can support applications on both domains.
BackgroundIn 2004 the concept of evidence-based software engineering (EBSE) was introduced at the ICSE04 conference.AimsThis study assesses the impact of systematic literature reviews (SLRs) which are the recommended EBSE method for aggregating evidence.MethodWe used the standard systematic literature review method employing a manual search of 10 journals and 4 conference proceedings.ResultsOf 20 relevant studies, eight addressed research trends rather than technique evaluation. Seven SLRs addressed cost estimation. The quality of SLRs was fair with only three scoring less than 2 out of 4.ConclusionsCurrently, the topic areas covered by SLRs are limited. European researchers, particularly those at the Simula Laboratory appear to be the leading exponents of systematic literature reviews. The series of cost estimation SLRs demonstrate the potential value of EBSE for synthesising evidence and making it available to practitioners.
"Gamification" is an informal umbrella term for the use of video game elements in non-gaming systems to improve user experience (UX) and user engagement. The recent introduction of 'gamified' applications to large audiences promises new additions to the existing rich and diverse research on the heuristics, design patterns and dynamics of games and the positive UX they provide. However, what is lacking for a next step forward is the integration of this precise diversity of research endeavors. Therefore, this workshop brings together practitioners and researchers to develop a shared understanding of existing approaches and findings around the gamification of information systems, and identify key synergies, opportunities, and questions for future research.
I defend here the thesis of the independence between domain knowledge and problem-solving knowledge, arguing against the dominance of the so-called ‘‘interaction problem’’ mentioned in a recent paper by Van Heijst, Schreiber and Wielinga to dispute the feasibility of a single domain ontology shared by a number of different applications. The main point is that reusability across multiple tasks or methods can and should be systematically pursued even when modelling knowledge related to a single task or method. Under this view, I discuss how the principles of formal ontology and ontological engineering can be used in the practice of knowledge engineering, focusing in particular on the interplay between general ontologies, method ontologies and application ontologies, and on the role of ontologies in the knowledge engineering process. I will then stress the role of domain analysis, often absent in current methodologies for the development of knowledge-based systems.
This paper will address why and how a reflexive and situated methodology could be employed to study cultural functions of play. Starting from the supposition that playing is pivotal to all game-research, I will follow Aarseth's claim that any (cultural) approach of games asks for an inclusion of the position of the player/researcher in its methodology (1). Being particularly interested in games as a cultural practice, I will add to his claim that for such kind of research a methodology is needed that enables us to see games as culture. My hypotheses will be that reflexivity and situatedness lie at the heart of any approach that wants to include both issues. I will show that reflexivity and situatedness may be needed as complementary tools to come to a cultural study of games that takes Aarseth's call for reflectivity serious. I will claim that the researcher needs the combined tools of reflexivity and situatedness because both situatedness (intertwining agent and environment) and reflexivity (distance/proximity) take into account the involvement of the researcher/player with its material and view this as a cultural praxis. Situatedness allows for game-research that shows the physical locality of playing whilst still relating play to a more global or national context. Reflexivity permits us to show how the researcher is culturally and locally involved in her quasi-object of study through play. Author Keywords
The adoption of gamification in learning and instruction is perceived to have mass appeal among the learners in stimulating motivation, learner engagement and social influence. This study is an attempt to present a summary of the empirical findings of state-of-the-art literature in the emerging field of gamification within the educational domain of learning and instruction. It reveals the latest scientific research evidence on the emerging trends of learning technologies and gamification plugins along with extending the possibilities for future research directions in revolutionizing learning and instruction through gamification. A systematic literature review examined the thematic and content analysis of 46 empirical research papers published in the Web of Science database between 2016 and 2019. The review critically appraised and evaluated the various contradictions found in the literature along with setting the stage for the significance of future research studies to re-examine the theoretical foundations of gamification, its methodological approaches, theoretical models, gaming platforms and apps, game mechanics and learning outcomes. This study not only attempts to shed light on the novelty of gamified learning perceived as a game-changer and key enabler of motivation, engagement, and user experience but also sought to outline the key challenges and barriers of gamification.
This book introduces and explores the field of tailored gamified educational technologies. Providing a theoretical overview of the domain, including a number of related psychological and educational theories along with a complete state-of-the-art analysis on this topic, it presents an approach and architecture to tailor these systems to students’ gamer type and age.
This article presents research works in which a cultural adaptation method and a knowledge-based advisor to help instructional designers in considering cultural variables during the instructional design process have been developed. To do so, a conceptual model of Culture was elaborated, cultural variables were identified and knowledge regarding these variables was modeled via an ontology that served to create the “Cultural Diversity” knowledge base integrating knowledge regarding five cultures. The advisor tool uses this knowledge to advise instructional designers on how to adapt a pedagogical scenario to a culture other than their own or for learners with a culture that is different from the one for which a pedagogical scenario was originally designed. The methodology used is Design-Based Research (DBR) and contains five iterations.
Este artigo apresenta uma nova abordagem para a modelagem do aluno em sistemas de e-learning para melhorar as capacidades de personalização, levando em consideração várias perspectivas complementares de contexto, como os contextos pessoal, educacional, tecnológico e especialmente o contexto cultural. As principais características da nossa abordagem são descritas e ilustradas, em particular detalhando (i) a adoção de ontologias para representação de modelos de contexto e (ii) como o contexto cultural poder ser modelado como uma extensão do tradicional modelo do aluno.
Research Methods in Human-Computer Interaction is a comprehensive guide to performing research and is essential reading for both quantitative and qualitative methods. Since the first edition was published in 2009, the book has been adopted for use at leading universities around the world, including Harvard University, Carnegie-Mellon University, the University of Washington, the University of Toronto, HiOA (Norway), KTH (Sweden), Tel Aviv University (Israel), and many others. Chapters cover a broad range of topics relevant to the collection and analysis of HCI data, going beyond experimental design and surveys, to cover ethnography, diaries, physiological measurements, case studies, crowdsourcing, and other essential elements in the well-informed HCI researcher's toolkit. Continual technological evolution has led to an explosion of new techniques and a need for this updated 2nd edition, to reflect the most recent research in the field and newer trends in research methodology. This Research Methods in HCI revision contains updates throughout, including more detail on statistical tests, coding qualitative data, and data collection via mobile devices and sensors. Other new material covers performing research with children, older adults, and people with cognitive impairments.
Gamification is applied as a tool to encourage behavioural change and promote desired attitudes in many fields. However, people with different backgrounds are influenced by gamification in different ways. This suggests that cultural influence can also impact the way gamification is best implemented within a particular context. This chapter starts by discussing how behaviour can be influenced by gamification. It then considers how culture in its different manifestations influences behaviour. The chapter then discusses motivation and its role in gamification. Finally, the key issue of the behavioural change capabilities of gamification combined with an understanding of behavioural change methods, the individual and the cultural and social context are discussed.
Using Hofstede’s culture dimensions and World Values Survey (WVS) dimensions, the study uses a series of multiple regressions to explore the relationship among national culture, creativity as measured by patents, economic productivity as measured by gross domestic product per capita, and student achievement as measured by Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study. The findings of this exploratory study highlight long-term orientation value from Hofstede’s national culture dimensions and tradition versus secular-rational values from the WVS as the most significant predictors of student academic achievement. A series of 12 regression analyses indicated significant relationships among student achievement, creativity, and economic productivity with models explaining between 19.9% and 76.0% of the variance among countries.
Gamification analytics describe methods and tools that help to monitor the success of gamification projects, to understand a user’s behaviour, and to adapt gamification designs. Even though experts agree on the importance of these activities, concrete processes and software tools have not been investigated yet. This chapter advocates and introduces gamification analytics related activities based on the findings of a study with gamification experts and illustrates them in a hypothetical gamification scenario. In the following, we identify and assess tools regarding their applicability for the presented analytical activities. This chapter helps practitioners to implement a data-driven monitoring and adaptation process within gamification projects and supports them in corresponding technology-decisions. The conclusion provides researchers with a basis for further research in the gamification analytics domain.
This thesis presents research performed over the span of 9 years in the area of adaptive multimedia interfaces (specifically Adaptive Hypermedia in eLearning), with special focus on a cultural education model.
In particular, the thesis looks at how the adaptive interfaces can cater for cultural diversity in education, instead of presenting a homogenous delivery for the whole student population, regardless of their cultural background. Specifically, this research provides a framework for cultural adaptation, CAE (Cultural Artefacts in Education), based on Marcus & Gould’s web model, as well as its source, Hofstede’s indexes. This framework is supported by a questionnaire, the CAE questionnaire, a key product of this research, which has been shown to map on Hofstede’s indexes, and which has been used to model features for personalised adaptive interfaces for different cultures. The questionnaire is in English language, but this work also presents a study showing to what extent the results obtained are similar to native language questionnaire results.
The CAE Framework is further extended by providing two ontologies, a full-scale ontology, called the CAE-F ontology, and a light-weight ontology, called the CAE-L ontology. These ontologies detail the HCI (Human Computer Interaction) features that need to be integrated into an adaptive system in order to cater for cultural adaptation. These features can be used for all types of adaptation, as defined in adaptive hypermedia. The latter ontology is then illustrated in a study of eleven countries, for the specific cultural adaptation case of interface adaptation, of which current research is extremely sparse.
These illustrations are further used in a formative evaluation, which establishes to what extent the cultural adaptation ontologies can be applied. This is followed by a summative, real-life evaluation of cultural adaptation for Romanian students, and the results are reported and discussed. This study validates the proof of concept for using CAE in a real world setting.
Finally, the overall achievements of this work are summarised, conclusions are drawn, and recommendation for further research are done.
This chapter outlines the principles of context and culture in the discipline of human computer interaction (HCI) for the purpose of good design in gamification. The important HCI theory of affordance is used to illustrate context and culture, and their importance in the design of artefacts, in this case games for education and business. We then consider how these concepts are incorporated into the game design through appropriate requirements engineering, utilising familiarity and enculturement. Familiarity—tied to learning within the ecological perspective of context—and enculturement—tied to the socialisation within the perspective of culture. It is argued that requirements engineering and analysis needs to take into account the dualistic nature of system interaction related to these HCI concepts, of being of both culture and context, rather than the common, somewhat muddled, perspective of a context mediated by a cultural perspective, or vice versa, or a conglomeration of the two.
Context
Systematic mapping studies are used to structure a research area, while systematic reviews are focused on gathering and synthesizing evidence. The most recent guidelines for systematic mapping are from 2008. Since that time, many suggestions have been made of how to improve systematic literature reviews (SLRs). There is a need to evaluate how researchers conduct the process of systematic mapping and identify how the guidelines should be updated based on the lessons learned from the existing systematic maps and SLR guidelines.
Objective
To identify how the systematic mapping process is conducted (including search, study selection, analysis and presentation of data, etc.); to identify improvement potentials in conducting the systematic mapping process and updating the guidelines accordingly.
Method
We conducted a systematic mapping study of systematic maps, considering some practices of systematic review guidelines as well (in particular in relation to defining the search and to conduct a quality assessment).
Results
In a large number of studies multiple guidelines are used and combined, which leads to different ways in conducting mapping studies. The reason for combining guidelines was that they differed in the recommendations given.
Conclusion
The most frequently followed guidelines are not sufficient alone. Hence, there was a need to provide an update of how to conduct systematic mapping studies. New guidelines have been proposed consolidating existing findings.
In times when interactive systems need to provide support for the emerging multi-cultureless of many countries, the "on-size-fits-all" approach is no longer applicable. Consequently, the introduction of the culture concept in interactive systems is becoming a necessity, a challenge, and a timely and relevant issue. Indeed, culture has received increasing attention in Human Computer Interaction (HCI) community. In this survey we summarize some basic concepts like internationalization, localization, describing some culture models, particularly Hofstede's cultural dimensions. After we discuss how HCI practices could address these cultural dimensions. Our intention is to establish background and some basic concepts for helping designers incorporating cultural issues in their interaction design.
This article describes briefly the Hofstede model of six dimensions of national cultures: Power Distance, Uncertainty Avoidance, Individualism/Collectivism, Masculinity/Femininity, Long/Short Term Orientation, and Indulgence/Restraint. It shows the conceptual and research efforts that preceded it and led up to it, and once it had become a paradigm for comparing cultures, research efforts that followed and built on it. The article stresses that dimensions depend on the level of aggregation; it describes the six entirely different dimensions found in the Hofstede et al. (2010) research into organizational cultures. It warns against confusion with value differences at the individual level. It concludes with a look ahead in what the study of dimensions of national cultures and the position of countries on them may still bring.
This article describes the genesis and development of concept mapping as a useful tool for science education. It also offers an overview of the contents of this special issue and comments on the current state of knowledge representation. Suggestions for further research are made throughout the article.
In order to study the impact of culture on the inter-organizational knowledge transfer, the transfer is conceptualized as an unfolding process consisting of stages through which the involved parties proceed. Such conceptualization allows a closer examination of how the cultural traits of source and recipient firms at different levels affect each stage of the transfer process. The cultural impacts are categorized into two main categories, monadic and dyadic. The theoretical and practical implications of the proposed model are discussed.
Literature on ethical behavior has paid little attention to the mechanism between macro- environmental variables and environmental
performance. This study aims at constructing a model to examine the␣relationships which link cultural values, population growth,
economic development, and environmental performance by incorporating the mediating role of education. The multiple linear
regression model was employed to test the hypotheses on a 3-year-pooled sample of 51 countries. Empirical results conclude
that national culture, economic development, and population growth would significantly influence environmental performance
directly. In addition, through the mediating effect of education, population growth and national culture would significantly
affect environmental performance indirectly. These findings provide theoretical and managerial implications for constructing
the mechanism of cultural values and ethical behavior in general and environmental management in particular.
From Game Design Elements to Gamefulness: Defining "Gamification
- Sebastian Deterding
- Miguel Sicart
- Lennart Nacke
- O' Kenton
- Dan Hara
- Dixon
Sebastian Deterding, Miguel Sicart, Lennart Nacke, Kenton O'Hara, and Dan
Dixon. 2011. From Game Design Elements to Gamefulness: Defining "Gamification". Proceedings of the 2011 annual conference extended abstracts on Human
factors in computing systems -CHI EA '11 (2011), 2425. https://doi.org/10.1145/
1979742.1979575 arXiv:11/09 [ACM 978-1-4503-0816-8]