Design and Implementation of Gamified Course Contents

Introduction

Gamification is a technique to implement game elements in a non-gaming environment. This term was first coined by Nick Pelling in 2003 (A brief history of gamification, 2013). However, gamification started to use commonly in teaching and learning until 2010 (Deterding, et al., 2011). The other related terms like ‘game based learning’ and ‘educational games’ are also used as like as gamification to enhance engagement for students. It has received enormous attention in recent days. This new terminology has harnessed its capacity in various domain. There are significant research works that clearly illustrate the gamified content’s applicability in education (Bonde et al., Christy & Fox, 2014), government services (Bista, Nepal, Paris, & Colineau, 2014), gaming (e.g. FarmVille2, CityVille), fitness (Nike+ app for iOS and Android) and in military unit (e.g. game based training for US army). Technology and social networks play a vital role in education from early childhood to grown-up stages (Kayımbaşıoğlu, et al., 2016). Leah and Erin (2017) argued how gamification and digital games can be used in higher education. Joana (2017) explained the role of gamification in operations research. In her paper, the author distinguishes between gamified and non-gamified courses and demonstrates how gamified courses increase the engagement of students. Besides, gamification can help the children with intellectual disabilities (Colpani and Homem, 2015). In this research paper, authors showed how a set of cutting edge technologies such as augmented and virtual reality can be integrated with gamification model and its significance towards disabilities. David et al. (2016) proposed a platform called ICT-Flag funded by the Spanish government which can be used to benefit students, teachers, and academic contributors. Patrick and Elaine (2016) investigated different levels of expectation from the gamified environment based on personality. Here, authors used the National Tax Forecasting Project (NTFP) which is an Irish gamified learning intervention platform that helps to forecast the national budget by asking input from the students. Furthermore, a platform called Edutronics is introduced to teach electronics by doing various tasks (Assante et al., 2016). Lane, et al., (2016) prototyped an educational platform to teach geometry for children. Hence, we can draw a portrayal of how a gamification model could be productive in education sectors especially in teaching and learning.