Dropouts and gamification

Here, far too late, my reflections for topic 4 come. In our group, we discussed much how to retain students on online courses. We all had the experience that the rate of dropouts is much higher in online courses than in campus courses. We discussed what the reasons were. The most common is probably that the students also work and they overestimate the time that they can devote to their studies (or underestimate the time that they need to devote). We found it consoling that although all the members in our group grapple with a constant lack of time, none of us has dropped out from the ONL-course. In order to further illustrate what is needed for keeping students aboard, we produced word clouds with the help of the mentimeter. The question was: How do we prevent dropouts from online or blended learning courses. We produced one cloud for our group and we asked the big community to contribute to another. Interestingly, they were partly different. The main difference was that support was our most emphasised word while communication was most emphasised in the big community. The reason for the difference may be that we had some technical problems for some of our group participants and we talked about the importance of supporting the students when they experience technical difficulties. And obviously, support requires communication – but takes it further. We also had a second question to the big group asking them to motivate their choice. But apparently, it did not work to have several questions on the mentimeter in this mode. So, we learned something also from this mistake :)

Now for something completely different: During the topic, I came to mull about whether we could learn from the gaming world. Gamification is making its entrance into more and more contexts – even in healthcare. Last year I spent some time on an online strategy game and my children play continuously. I have realised that the gaming companies are really skilled in keeping people stuck in their games. After all, it is a necessity for their survival. So, how could we learn from this? A study by van Roy and Zaman (2018) showed that gamification can indeed increase motivation over time. However, to be maximum effective it should be customised as individuals are motivated by different features. Koivisto and Hamari (2014) studied demographic differences in users of an exercise gamification service. In their study, they found that women report more social benefits from gamification and that the use decreased with age. More importantly, they found that the perceived enjoyment declined with use. This is, without doubt, the reason that online gaming firms constantly continue to develop new features in the games. Without them, gamers will become bored and leave. The same probably applies to education. Games can also be used for assessment of learning. Obviously, quizzes of various kinds can be fun and useful. But they are also a bit time-consuming to produce. Jo et al. (2018) instead suggest a generic tool based on a word game that measures the students' familiarity with the words used in the video lectures. Interesting, but I don’t know how to gain access to it. Nevin et al. (2014) tested a quiz-based game in graduate medical education. They found that it was well accepted, contributed to learning and that leaderboards were the greatest motivator to participate. Can we use leaderboards in our courses or will it be considered too elitist in a Swedish context? If we can, I am sure they have a profound motivating effect as they tickle our competitive spirit. In summary, it seems that gamification can be useful. The main trick is probably to activate our hormonal gratification centres. I will ponder further over this and see if somehow I can integrate it in my teaching.

References:

Jo, J., Yu, W., Koh, K. H. & Lim, H. (2018), "Development of a game-based learning system for online education environments based on video lecture: minimum learning judgment system", Journal of Educational Computing Research, Vol. 56 No. 6, pp. 802-25.

Koivisto, J. & Hamari, J. (2014), "Demographic differences in perceived benefits from gamification", Computers in Human Behavior, Vol. 35 No. 179-88.

Nevin, C. R., Westfall, A. O., Rodriguez, J. M., Dempsey, D. M., Cherrington, A., Roy, B., Patel, M. & Willig, J. H. (2014), "Gamification as a tool for enhancing graduate medical education", Postgrad Med J, Vol. 90 No. 685-93.

Roy, v. & Zaman (2018), "Need-supporting gamification in education: An assessment of motivational effects over time", Computers & Education, Vol. 127 No. 283-97.