Home Page         What Is It?          History           Current Research        

How It Impacts The Brain        Case Studies          Issues             Gamification Conclusions

 Case Studies

Gamification in Educational Settings

Case studies take a more focused look at gamification in relation to a particular sample group or subtopic within the concept. Case studies are important to read as complements to standard research studies in that they can provide more individualized or specialized data collection (Willingham, 2012). The following case studies look, in depth, at several issues and/or components of gamification within the classroom and will enhance educators' full understanding of gamification as well as raise other questions in relation to the idea.

Abramovich, Samuel; Schunn, Christian; Higashi, Ross Mitsuo. Educational Technology, Research and Development; New York61.2 (Apr 2013): 217-232.

Retrieved from: http://128.192.17.191/EMAT7050/articles/AbromovichEtAl.pdf

     This case study analyzed a badge system for middle-school students learning applied mathematics while using an intelligent-tutor system. The study consisted of 36 seventh graders and 15 eighth graders in a low-income charter school. Researchers measured Mastery, Performance Approach, and Performance Avoidance Goals. After analysis of these measurements, the authors state they found both positive and negative effects of using the badges and this can be different across varying learner performance ranges. It also varies by the type of badge being awarded. A big takeaway from this research is that when designing educational badges, the abilities of the students and the attributes  of the badges themselves will play main predictors of how the badges will influence the learning. 

Googch, D., Vasalou, A., Benton, L., Khaled, R. (2016). Using gamification to motivate students with Dyslexia. CHI 2016. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/2858036.2858231

     This small and brief case study involved only two teachers and seven students and spanned approximately twelve weeks. During this time period, the researchers collected data, mostly via interviews, pertaining to how/if gamification effected the motivation of the dyslexic students using the program classDojo, educational software that uses avatars and badges to encourage students to work through lessons. Before the commencement of this study, the students were unfamiliar with this program. The researchers interviewed them, their parents, and their teachers to form a baseline look into their motivational levels. After working with classDojo for twelve weeks, the students, parents, and teachers were again interviewed and their responses compared to their original responses. From these interviews, the researchers concluded that the motivational levels of the students involved in the research did, in fact, increase with the introduction of classDojo to their learning environments. The researchers admit that their sample group is small and that further researcher is needed in order to extrapolate their findings. However, the fact that gamification did increase motivation when used with dyslexic students should not be overlooked just due to the small sample group size.  

Huang, W. & Soman, D. (2013). A Practitioner’s guide to Gamification of education. Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto.  Retrieved from https://inside.rotman.utoronto.ca/behaviouraleconomicsinaction/files/2013/09/GuideGamificationEducationDec2013.pdf

 This is a guide book to help educators implement Gamification in their curriculum.  After the first part of guided instruction and explanation there are four case studies that begin on page 16 of the booklet.

Case Study #1-  Ben Leong worked with instructor of an undergraduate course in computing that historically struggled with student engagement.  The JFDI Academy was created by this, Assistant Professor at the School of Computing, National University in Singapore.  Ben Leong attempted to curb student procrastination.  Feedback was not provided by the instructor in a timely manner and this became a problem when the students were having difficulty identifying and remembering key concepts. Gamification elements were added and the curriculum was divided up into smaller chunks, now called missions.  Students needed to complete missions and could earn extra points or complete “side quests” (17).  The top 15 in the class were displayed on a leaderboard.  The team devised autocorrecting assignments that helped students get immediate feedback and the instructor could identify what problem areas students were having and could then adjust the classwork.  Students became more engaged and procrastinated less.  The instructor kept up on the smaller curriculum segments better and could help the students more efficiently.  Adding Gamification elements was helpful and successful in this case.

Case Study #2 Health Care University was created by Capital Blue-Cross to help consumers understand their healthcare.  The steps are watch a movie (and/or read a pdf on the same topic), take a quiz and play a game.  When the student gets 100% on the game they can go on to the next topic, or they can move forward anyway if they want. There are four stages.  Healthcare Reform 101, Market place Basics, Understanding Subsidies, and Shopping on the Marketplace.  There are 10 courses overall. 62% of the students who complete one course continued to complete all 10.  Original registration for BlueCross employees was 90%, far exceeding their initial expectations.   The program was deemed a success in helping people understand how health care works and how to find the best and most affordable health care.

Case Study #3- The Deloitte Leadership academy was created by the consulting firm Deloitte Consulting.  They were trying to improve their digital training for executives.  They were also concerned with engagement of their employees, given a 2011 Gallup Poll that found, “71% of workers were ‘not engaged’ in their work and a lot of money and effort is spent on training material that goes unused.” (p.19).  They implemented a points and badges system to get their executives to complete and utilize their training.  The pool of students was very large and had many individual needs like traveling for the company and different levels of education and experience.  The training program catered to everyone’s need and time frame.  The Deloitte learning portals showed an increase in visits and returning users.

 Case Study #4  Min Lee and Audrey Tan are Stanford University graduates who examined the 2008 financial crisis and deemed that it was caused by “…the low level of people’s understanding and utilization of financial literacy.” (p. 20).  As a result, they created a financial literacy program call PlayMoolah in 2012.  It was designed for people 6 and up.  The game uses avatars, incentives, leveling, and challenges.  It covers the financial literacy elements of earn, spend, save, invent and give and include life skills like goal setting and collaboration and includes parental involvement and guidance.  Some parents reported their children were more involved in their chores, as parents can help the students earn incentives for the game by doing tasks in the real world.  The evaluation factor came from the partnerships this program had with local banks.  In Singapore, the OCBC Bank reported in 2012 there was a 78% increase in young people wanting to increase their savings.

Stott, A. & Neustaedter, C. (n.d.) Analysis of Gamification in education.  School of Interactive  

     Arts and Technology, Simon Fraser University.  Retrieved from  

     http://clab.iat.sfu.ca/pubs/Stott-Gamification.pdf

Stott and Neustaedter look at three case studies to show that the four elements of gamification can lead to student engagement and eventual success.  These are Freedom to Fail (choice), Rapid Feedback, Progression and Storytelling.  While the conclusion recognized that many classes use these elements under different names, purposefully and careful implementation of game elements can improve the learning experience and student outcome.  The authors use three case studies.

#1 Professor Clifford Lampe from the School of information at the University of Michigan.  He teaches Introduction to Information to 200 students.  Students make choices on how to proceed with the class at the beginning by choose the type of quest they prefer. The instruction includes leveling assignments and gives rapid feedback.  The feedback element created a greater workload for the teacher so he solved this by having a teacher assistant monitor feedback.  He noted that student feedback increased as did Collaboration. He used Live Action Role Play at the end of the project to engaged in storytelling and included a competitive nature to the role playing. He found that students retained information better because they remember the experiences of the gamification elements.

#2.  Just Press Play was developed by Rochester Institute of Technology.  This was not part of the subject or specific class but encouraged social interaction among the students which is intended to lead to success.  There is a focus on individual accomplishments rather than subject content.  Achievement cards are earned and uploaded, allowing students to track their progress.  Separating the achievements from the grades allows students the freedom to fail.  Feedback is instantanious as the achievements are uploaded and progression is immediately visible Achievements lead to unlocking story elements. 

#3  Dr. Carman Neustaedter assistant professor at the school of Interactive Arts and Technology at Simon Fraser University.  Dr. Neustaredter teaches Speculative design to about 70 students.  Students have different tasks to complete a final project.  They earn points for each task and can track their progress and points through a leaderboard.  The point system is used to show there is possible improvement rather than the finality of a grade for each task.   They reflect on each step which engages the freedom to fail element.  Failures are emphasized as learning opportunities. The reflection element helps them tell their own story. 

Chen, Y., Burton, T., Vorvoreanu, M., & Whittinghill, D. (2015). Cogent：A Case Study of Meaningful Gamification in Education with Virtual Currency. International Journal Of Emerging Technologies In Learning (IJET), 10(1), pp. 39-45. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.3991/ijet.v10i1.4247

This is an in-depth case study, spanning four years; however, results report only two years seemed to be utilized. Cogent was a virtual economy system implemented over the span of four years for students pursuing a B.S. in a Technology field. The article does a decent job of detailing the background knowledge for motivation and engagement in education. It specifically highlights the self-motivation theory and extrinsic motivation. The paper cites cases of positive affects of gamification in education such as increased engagement and motivation during the reward based game. However, the authors also cite the negative affects that if the game is taken away, the rewards are gone, then intrinsic motivation could be even lower than it was before the game started. Stating, a forever loop is created if typical game mechanics are implemented. To avoid this loop, the researches applied meaningful gamification to their study. In meaningful gamification, design elements are meaningful to the users non-game goals and needs. It seeks to make connections between the in-game elements and non-game elements which can allow users to maintain their intrinsic motivation. A major aim of this case study was to inform readers about ways to implement meaningful gamification into education, as well as report on the results of their findings. 

The researches used focus groups and personal interviews to collect qualitative data to yield their findings. Results of the study were broken down into five major themes. Participants were encouraged to participate in and out of class - this lead to participants thinking about ways to strengthen their resume by becoming more involved. Other themes address concerns about confusion using Cogent and the complications or complexity with the design of the system/rules. The fourth theme stated that participants felt only two years of their four years were really utilized in using Cogent, basically the classes that were taught by the professor that implemented the program. The biggest pitfall was the usability of the Cogent website and the features it lacked when compared to other professionally ran sites. The end result, users reported the potential of the program to yield positive results for motivation and engagement; however, the execution was poor. 

Su, C.-H. (2016, August). The effects of students' motivation, cognitive load and learning anxiety in gamification software engineering education: a structural equation modeling study. Multimedia Tools and Applications, 75(16), 10013-10036. doi:10.1007/s11042-015-2799-7

As many of the above case studies present findings about applying gamification techniques to classrooms to increase student motivation they do not always look at student anxiety while learning. This study follows the guidelines of studying learning motivation, cognitive load and learning anxiety on academic performance. The designers are working to establish Gamification Software Engineering Education Learning System (GSEELS) that can evaluate these attributes for students and provide feedback to the users. 

The authors use a Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) to the empirical research, they used a questionnaire that contains: 1. a Gamification Learning Scale; 2. a Learning Motivation Scale; 3. a Cognitive Load Scale; 4. a Learning Anxiety Scale; and 5. an Academic Performance Scale. One of the major findings reported was that with strong learning motivation resulted from a low learning anxiety. This obviously supports other research that students will perform better when they are less stressed and feel more comfortable in the learning environment. There were four major recommendations made:

1. Schools should continue to encourage teachers to use and develop innovative teaching materials in a gamification framework. This has shown to increase student motivation and students have reported satisfaction in learning from these methods. 
2. Teachers are asked to apply gamification teaching aids to their instruction, especially in textbook based instruction. It was shown that students may more productively review what they have learned and more willing to learn the material through a gamified approach. 
3. To the students: "It is suggested that the investment in learning gamification could reduce students’ cognitive load and positively reinforce academic performance."
4. They even encourage the parents to allow their students to play games. Obviously, do not indulge in the games, but do spend a few times a week for about 30-60 minutes playing games. 

Resources

Learning Image, no attribution required, Retrieved from: https://pixabay.com/en/learn-school-usb-plug-electronic-2099928/

Willingham, D. (2012). When can you trust the experts? How to tell good science from bad in education. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.