An Attempt to Gamify a First Course in Thermodynamics

Abstract

and attended a high school formerly in Chester, Nova Scotia. While he does not believe that he was ever the cause of academic institutions closing after he graduated, it did seem to be a trend. Since 2003, however, he has evidently improved the luck of institutions by teaching undergraduate courses in design and mechanical engineering. Dr.

Gamification in Engineering Education in Canada: A Systematic Review of the Literature

“…This systematic review of the literature shows exciting findings around the implementation of games and gamification in engineering education in Canada. Gamified pedagogies in engineering education has been used in a wide range of contexts, from Engineering Ethics [20], Professional Development [7], to Biomedical Design [21] and Thermodynamics [4].…”

“…, with a total of 6 papers (40%) utilizing at least one of these elements. Progression is commonly incorporated by "rebranding" grades, and awarding students Points instead of marks [4,7], or even letting them progress through the activity only after unlocking previous "levels" or earning "achievements" [11]. Freedom to Fail and Rapid Feedback (40% each) were also common game elements adopted by educators.…”

“…Narrative can come in the form of creating a story or assigning students roles during an activity [21,24] and when papers reported Freedom of Choice, they usually allowed students to choose what or how to complete specific tasks. For example, students were free to choose the order in which the "missions" were completed [4] or able to decide what strategies they were going to use to solve a given problem [25].…”

“…Rapid Feedback [4,20,[22][23][24]27] Freedom of Choice [9,20,24,25,27] Freedom to Fail [4,20,[22][23][24]27] Narrative [20][21][22][23][24] Competition [9,21,22,[25][26][27] Cooperation [21,22,25,27] Points [7,9,25,28] Badges [9,11] Leaderboards [9] Leveling Up Progress Bar and Unlocks [4,9,22,27] Game Level [4,23] External Rewards [9,22,26] For gauging the success of the intervention, the survey instrument was the most frequent evaluation metric used by authors, which was present in 8 out of the 15 papers (53%). While 5 out of these 8 papers had the survey as their only metric, the other 3 used this ins...…”

“…Gamification uses elements of game experiences, as opposed to complete play experience (toys) or complete game experiences [3]. The goal behind using gamification in educational contexts is to harness inspiration and concepts from games to change the incentives for students [4].…”