Level up: uma proposta de processo gamificado para a educação

Abstract

Technology is a force for change in the culture of society. This transformation often requires the evolution of several fields in human knowledge, one of them being the field of Education. As a generation of youngsters is always connected through the use of technological devices, with the possibility of accessing and exchanging a large amount of information in a fast way, the traditional learning models which are teacher-centered and the students play a passive role are gradually becoming more inefficient. This inadequacy has a big role in student motivation, that is rapidly decreasing by each year as students feel less connected with their learning environment and their practices. One field of research that has become prominent in past years concerning student motivation in education is that of Gamification. However, a common problem exists with the design of gamified solutions for education: the lack of a clear design process that guides the gamification towards an efficient model capable of effectively attend to the student’s needs. To contribute to the solution of this problem, this work proposes a gamification process called Level-Up, based on the design thinking for educators approach, which has as a core principle the investigation and gain of knowledge about the problematic of the students and learning environment before any solution is designed and executed. On top of that, the gamification framework Octalysis is used to evaluate how the motivational aspects are taken into account in the investigated scenario, and how the game elements can be used to change and improve student motivation in order to attain the objectives set by the gamification. To validate this gamification process, a case study is executed in an introductory programming class of an undergraduate course, in which promising results were obtained.