Gamesy: Using Game Mechanics to Boost Intrinsic Motivation in School

Gamesy: Using Game Mechanics to Boost Intrinsic Motivation in School

B. W. Waweru, P. S. Joseph Ng, H. C. Eaw
Copyright: © 2021 |Pages: 17
DOI: 10.4018/IJBSA.20210701.oa3
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Abstract

Games have existed since time immemorial and have proved to significantly change people's mentality and attitudes towards countless scenarios. Although games are ‘time wasters', we should acknowledge the one thing that games offer, constant testing, and learning a simple game engages the brain and proves that games are an asset in mental development. Thus, gamification can be used to provide a fun learning environment. In this article, the authors discuss how gamification has been implemented in various applications over the years, people's take on gamification and gamified apps from a survey and interview conducted, and thereafter design a student-oriented gamified study app, Gamesy, that makes use of game elements to improve performance in school and change/improve study habits in a game environment via progressive game design. With this, better performance may be realized in the tertiary education level.
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1. Introduction

The advancement of technology over the years has brought about a lot of change in our lives, both positive and negative. This has posed new challenges to the social structure of our society and therefore new challenges to education in the twenty-first century. This is due to technological advancement in social media, video games, internet, cell phone applications, text messaging, and more. These have made it easy to access a lot of information and created a whole new world of distractions and timewasters for everyone (K.M. Liow, 2021), (Dichev, Dicheva, & Angelova, 2015) (C.M, JOMcai: The Contribution of Computer-Assisted Instruction on Learning Improvement of Science Student, 2016) (C.M, P.S, & K, A Study on Integrating Penetration Testing into the Information Security Framework for Malaysia Higher Education Institutions, 2015). This is seen in most young people who have adopted the modern technology in their lives to a point where they would rather spend more time with a digital display than with people, in reality, a mechanism to avoid reality as it is and following what 'could be' via the modern technology. Therefore, there is a need to integrate some of these technologies into our lives to improve them in reality and not in theory or an abstract world that does not exist (C.M, JOMcai: The Contribution of Computer-Assisted Instruction on Learning Improvement of Science Student, 2016).

Digital games are attractive to frequent videogame players, gamers, without considering the age as they spend a lot of time playing them (Noraddin & Kian, 2014). In the past, playing videogames was considered an activity for young boys but nowadays the average age of a gamer is 35 years, and the distribution of gender has been incredibly balanced (Fonseca, et al., 2017). But with time, the effect videogames have on the players has led to conflict where some people argue that videogames have more negative impacts than positive impacts. There are arguably a number of health issues associated with videogames and mostly focused on the psychological well-being of a person. Behavioural complaints such as violent behaviour among children or, to be more specific, the youth have been emerging and blamed on videogames. Also, some research done on the effect of videogames have proved that violence can be an outcome of playing violent games where the individual may become more aggressive or stimulate aggression during a competition (Dowsett & Jackson, 2019). But, when we focus on the positive impacts videogames have, we see how the core motives for playing videogames are focused on having fun rather than achievements or obsession (Halbrook, O'Donnell, & Msetfi, 2019) therefore, videogames are intended to generate fun but not the other negative outcomes. Video games have been integrated into many sectors and therefore a great method to improve productivity. Apps such as gamified habit tracking apps have come up due to this. Games are made by game designers/teams and consumed by players. They are played and then discarded later by the players but what makes games unique is their unpredictability. The outcome of events is, if not always, unknown and that forms the interesting and addictive feel of playing the games (Fonseca, et al., 2017).

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