A Review of Gamification Platforms for Higher Education

Providing an engaging yet meaningful learning experience for higher education students can be proven challenging. Teachers constantly try to find ways to strengthen the students’ cognitive, emotional and behavioral engagement but often encounter administrative, pedagogical and technical challenges. Recently, in their effort to engage students in the learning process, higher education teachers are experimenting with the concept of gamification and the use of game elements into courses and classrooms. Nevertheless, gamification most of the times requires a system or platform in order to be successful. This paper provides a thorough review of current gamification platforms that can be utilized in a higher education setting and discusses challenges and opportunities experienced by both teachers and students while using them. Five popular gamification platforms are critically evaluated in order to assist teachers in choosing the right platform for their needs. For each platform, we present the supported gamification elements in terms of Dynamics, Mechanics and Components and we evaluate the type of gamification offered (reward-based or meaningful). Finally, we provide easy-to-interpret comparison tables with the characteristics of each platform.

1. Motivation is considered a key factor in affecting people’s behavior towards the accomplishment of goals. Gamification, a fairly new concept, aims to improve people’s motivation and engagement in different aspects of their lives. Deterding at. al. define gamification as “the use of game design elements in nongame contexts” and categorize these game elements by abstraction level starting from concrete to the most abstract [1]. (@goshevski2017, 1)
   • How do different gamification platforms improve people's motivation?

1. Werbach and Hunter present game design elements as pyramidal hierarchy composed of three layers: components, mechanics and dynamics [2].Components are concrete part of games responsible for gamifying the environment and achieving goals described in the higher-level elements. Mechanics are responsible for system’s engagement by driving the action forward and encouraging user’s actions. Dynamics, the peak of the pyramid, are motivating users to do all tasks towards accomplishing the final goal through narratives or social interactions. (@goshevski2017, 1)
   • Conceptual framework.
2. The rewardbased concept implies usage of external rewards to modify students’ behavior through extrinsic motivation. The most common forms of rewards are: Badges, Levels/leaderboards, Achievements and Points i.e. BLAP gamification as defined by Nicholson [4]. Badges reflect achievements visually and demonstrate earned strengths along the gamified pathway. Levels deliver overall progression of the game and the exact point where the player stands. Leaderboards help the game progression by ranking players according their achievements. Achievements are predefined objectives that players are striving to accomplish. Finally, points quantity player’s progression throughout the game in different units of measurements (e.g. experience points XP). The reward-based gamification approach is concerned with short-term benefits [5]. It can have immediate effects and is appropriate for teaching new skills or completing tasks for which users do not have internal motivation. (@goshevski2017, 1)
   • Definition of rewards-based gamification. Extrinsic motivation.
3. On the other hand, meaningful gamification is concerned about long-term benefits of gamification on the users. It aims to engage users by increasing their intrinsic motivation instead of using external rewards [4, 5]. The basis of meaningful gamification is the Self-Determination Theory (SDT) which implies that intrinsic motivation is driven by: autonomy, competence or mastery, and relatedness [6]. Autonomy refers to freedom of choice; competence refers to mastering learning material that would encourage user to engage deeper in the course activities; and relatedness represents social engagement and relations between participants. Nicholson [5] took further steps and suggested that achieving meaningful gamification requires six elements namely engagement, play, exposition, choice, information and reflection. (@goshevski2017, 1)
   • Definition of meaningful gamification. Intrinsic motivation.
4. ClassCraft, Kahoot!, Rezzly, Seppo and Youtopia. Our analysis is based on a) identifying the offered game elements according to Werbach and Hunter’s hierarchical classification [2] and b) classifying the gamification offered according to Becker and Nicholson two types of gamification for managing classrooms: reward-based and meaningful [3]. (@goshevski2017, 2)
   • Platforms and conceptual framework again.

1. ClassCraft mostly employs elements of reward-based gamification but also attempts to trigger intrinsic motivation by encouraging students to take control of their learning process. (@goshevski2017, 2)
2. All these characteristics demonstrate that Rezzly meets the requirements of meaningful gamification. (@goshevski2017, 3)
3. Seppo cannot be observed as a reward-based gamification as it does not incorporate the concepts of BLAP gamification [5]. It rather engages students by triggering their intrinsic motivation, likewise supporting the concept of meaningful gamification. (@goshevski2017, 3)
4. Overall, Youtopia can be classified as a reward-based gamification platform, since it uses game elements that typically aim to engage and motivate through extrinsic motivation. (@goshevski2017, 4)
5. Kahoot! creates fun and engaging learning experience and helps students to master new knowledge relatively easy [13]. This is possible because students are challenged by the real time in-game feedback to initiate class discussion why specific answer is correct or not. Thus, the specific platform encourages learning through student’s selfreflection, and to a certain extent, it supports the concept of meaningful gamification [5, 12]. (@goshevski2017, 4)
6. Nicholson’s research confirms that leaderboards may easily demotivate especially in lower ranked students [26]. On the other hand, Becker in her study concludes that leaderboards associated with scores, but without students’ names motivate students to achieve higher scores [3]. (@goshevski2017, 4)
   • How can you have a leaderboard without names?
7. Yet, the biggest challenge while adopting gamification in higher education is time. Teachers should spend additional time to: provide frequent feedback, track students’ progress, and create quests and awards for different pathways through the course [3]. (@goshevski2017, 4)
   • Teacher time cost++.
8. The main challenge while using this platform would be to keep student’s interest, motivation and engagement, which tend to slowly decrease after a few Kahoot! Sessions [12, 13, 30]. (@goshevski2017, 5)
   • Kahoot gets boring after a while.