Gamification
Z. Morovati; N. Mohammadhasani; Y. Mahdavi Nasab
Abstract
Background and Objectives Learning reading and writing skills in the first grade is crucial and fundamental. It has always been considered highly important for students to learn these skills at an early age. By learning to read in elementary school, students can accurately and comprehensively read various ...
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Background and Objectives Learning reading and writing skills in the first grade is crucial and fundamental. It has always been considered highly important for students to learn these skills at an early age. By learning to read in elementary school, students can accurately and comprehensively read various texts, including words, sentences, and simple texts. Strengthening their reading skills enables students to understand and benefit from the information available in books, newspapers, magazines, and other resources, which is essential for effective learning and progress in different subjects. Moreover, learning writing skills is also of great importance in the first grade. With this skill, students can express their thoughts, ideas, and experiences fully and accurately. They can arrange sentences in a logical order, use correct grammar rules, and form paragraphs correctly. This fundamental skill is crucial for written communication in the future and helps students develop strong analytical skills, creativity, and oral communication abilities. Engaging students in the learning process is one of the major challenges faced by teachers. Therefore, the use of an engaging learning method has become a concern for teachers in the field of teaching and learning. This study aimed to investigate the impact of gamification with badges on reading and writing skills as well as academic engagement among first-grade elementary school students.Materials and Methods: The research population consisted of all female first-grade students in Qazvin province during the academic year 2020-2021. A cluster sampling method was used to select the sample from different classes across the city. The sample size included three groups of 25 students each, divided into two experimental groups (gamification with badges and gamification without badges) and one control group. The research design employed a pretest-posttest design with a control group. The research instruments included researcher-developed reading and writing skill tests and the Rio Academic Engagement Questionnaire. The reliability of each measure was calculated using Cronbach's alpha. Descriptive statistics were used to analyze the data, including means and standard deviations, while inferential statistics included Analysis of Covariance and Tukey's post hoc test using SPSS software.Findings: The results of the Analysis of Covariance indicated that the use of gamification had a significant effect on reading skills (F = 6.166, p< 0.003) and writing skills (F = 4.88, p< 0.010), as well as academic engagement (behavioral: F = 134.462, p < 0.000; emotional: F = 43.546, p< 0.000; cognitive: F = 348.598, p< 0.000; and agentic: F = 349.853, p< 0.000). Furthermore, Tukey's post hoc test revealed that the gamification with badges group outperformed the gamification without badges group in three subscales of the academic engagement (behavioral, agentic, and cognitive).Conclusions: The findings of this study demonstrated that the use of gamification had a positive impact on reading and writing skills as well as academic engagement among elementary school students. Some recommendations include utilizing gamification strategies to create interactive, engaging, and lively learning environments, designing gamified learning environments to enhance motivation, participation, collaboration, and engagement, and exploring the effects of gamification (e.g., leaderboard) on increasing students' teamwork abilities.
Gamification
R. Tohand; M. Alinejad; B. Daneshmand
Abstract
Background and Objectives: The gamification approach is one of the newest and most attractive developments in recent years, which has been effective in various fields, including education. This approach attracted the attention of its audience by creating excitement and interaction. Gamification means ...
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Background and Objectives: The gamification approach is one of the newest and most attractive developments in recent years, which has been effective in various fields, including education. This approach attracted the attention of its audience by creating excitement and interaction. Gamification means the application of game elements and components in a non-game situation, which, according to an attractive and predetermined process, considers certain goals. The gamification approach with the effectiveness of the curriculum created a dynamic and interactive environment for the learners and improved their educational and learning status in a suitable context. This research was conducted with the aim of identifying the experiences of experts in connection with the application of the elements of the gamification approach in the higher education curriculum.Methods: This qualitative research was conducted using a phenomenological (descriptive) approach in the year 1401. In this study, a deep question was posed to experts to obtain their experiences, and if necessary, elements of the gamification approach were explained for the interviewees to express their experiences related to them. The participants included experts from across the country who were involved in education, research, the production of electronic content for higher education systems related to gamification. Based on targeted sampling and snowball technique, 18 participants were identified at the national level. The interviews, which lasted for one hour each, continued until theoretical saturation was reached. After conducting and recording the interviews, they were transcribed full. The transcriptions were then reviewed multiple times, comparing the text with the audio, and subsequently subjected to a coding and analysis system.Findings: Based on the experts' experiences, the elements of gamification approach that can be employed in higher education curriculum were as follows: Create excitement (presenting engaging content, using active teaching methods, behavioral cues, competitions and questionnaires, adventure and avoiding repetition), Create partnership and interaction (instructor with learners, utilizing virtual space, through content and among learners), Create competition (group competitions, time constraints, individual competitions, and lottery-based competitions), Create motivation (creative techniques, fostering intrinsic motivation, fostering extrinsic motivation, motivational statements), Provide feedback (appropriate feedback for effort, qualitative feedback, immediate feedback after the test), Scoring (opportunity for remediation, progress bar, irregular scoring, and role determination), Rewarding (giving rewards, types of incentives, designing certificates, and awarding them), Create challenge (by posing questions and using tools), Determining rules and regulations (setting multidimensional goals for the lesson and announcing them at the beginning of the term, drawing a roadmap by the teacher, and sweet penalty) and Leveling (leveling the content and progressing step by step from easy to difficult, from concrete to abstract, from known to unknown).Conclusion: The gamification approach has elements that, by implementing it in the curriculum of higher education, could lead to the attractiveness and dynamism of teaching and facilitate the learning process. Therefore, it is possible to use the experiences of the experts of the gamification approach in the educational process to change the class from a dry and boring teacher-centered atmosphere, go out and use the elements of the gamification approach to move towards inclusiveness and make the learning process attractive, enjoyable and lasting. This approach has paid special attention to the audience and their interests and considered the participation and interaction of learners to put learning in a happy, attractive, active and effective process.
Gamification
F. Sedighi Motlagh; M. Roshanian Ramin; H. Khademii
Abstract
Background and Objectives: Mathematics is one of the main subjects of the primary school and requires special attention; so, to improve the progress of mathematics, the role of motivational factors, especially attitudes towards mathematics, should be considered, and teaching methods should create interest ...
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Background and Objectives: Mathematics is one of the main subjects of the primary school and requires special attention; so, to improve the progress of mathematics, the role of motivational factors, especially attitudes towards mathematics, should be considered, and teaching methods should create interest in this lesson. In this regard, the present study was conducted with the aim of examining the impact of game-based education on the attitude and learning of mathematics among primary school female students.Methods: The research method in this study was a quasi-experiment of the pretest-posttest design with the experimental-control groups. The statistical papulation included all female students of the first-grade of primary school in the academic year 1401-1402 in Mallard. The research sample was selected by using the available sampling method. Thus, from among the primary schools of Mallard, the girls' primary school of Iran2 was selected, and from among four classes in the first-grade of this school, two classes were selected; then, the students of these two classes (62 students) were sorted by the average math score from low to high, then from above two people were selected and one person was randomly assigned to the experimental group and one person was assigned to the control group. The research tool consisted of five non-digital games that designed and implemented by the researchers. First, the pretest of learning math and the test of attitudes to math lessons were given to both groups; then the topics (familiarity with numbers, addition of numbers, and familiarity with the single-decimal table) were taught in the classroom by the researcher in five sessions of forty-five minutes (with the pretest and posttest session, a total of 7 sessions) in the experimental group via games. At the same time, these topics were taught in the control group in five sessions of forty-five minutes (with a pre-test and post-test session of 7 sessions) in a traditional and common way implemented by the class teacher; then, posttest was administered. The data collection tool in the research included the Aiken math attitude questionnaire, which covered three sub-scales (enjoying math lessons, fear of math and valuing and caring about math lessons). Reliability of the questionnaires were 0.887, 0.841, 0.912, respectively. Second tool was the researcher-made mathematics learning test. The validity of this test was confirmed by the first-grade teachers and reliability was obtained as 0.81 with Cronbach's alpha coefficient. Descriptive statistics (mean and standard deviation) were used to analyze data and covariance analysis was used in the inferential statistics section.Findings: The data analysis indicated that the use of the game would influence the attitude and mathematical learning of the first-grade female students, and therefore, the main hypothesis of the research as “game-based education would have an effect on improving the attitude and mathematical learning of the first-grade female students” was confirmed. Other research hypotheses were confirmed at a meaningful level of 0.001.Conclusion: The results of this study showed that students learn and remember lessons better via applying games and they enjoy this way of learning more and become more active and dynamic, and the learning process would accelerate.
