Gamification's Role as a Learning and Assessment Tool in Education

Foundations Of Creating A Meaningful Gamification

The concept of meaningful gamification was introduced by Nicholson, (2012) through a user-centred exploration. A meaningful gamification will be successfully implemented if it puts the “needs of the users first over the needs of an organization”. This allows the cultivation of a positive feeling among the users, thus leading to long term and deep engagement allowing the users to have a positive experience that eventually will lead towards a longer-term and deeper engagement (Sanmugam, et al., (2014). A false sense of achieving a target will occur if the focus is solely based on game mechanisms. This was supported by Glover, (2013) whom found that important game concepts, gives an overview of examples from outside education and provided several ideas for executing gamification into education generally, and e-learning specifically. Levels of motivation also need to be known prior to the introduction of a reward system. This is because in an optimized environment, dependency towards the rewards may disrupt their flow of learning. As a result of this, the learning activity andgamificationshould be done and planned at the same stage. Meanwhile, gamification should focus more on quality based elements such as students assessing and giving feedback among themselves; rather than rewards and points; quantitative elements. Rewards too need to be created or set aside to make sure it’s achievable to push up the motivation level, yet limited enough to create a sense of accomplishment receiving it. This reduces the sense of abundance in rewards; creating a sense of uniqueness in that reward that pushes to participants to strife for it.