GamiTool: Supporting Instructors in the Gamification of MOOCs

Abstract

Reward-based gamification strategies are proposed as a promising technique to increase student engagement in Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), following its success in other smallscale educational settings. However, these strategies imply a number of orchestration tasks (e.g., design, management) that are usually carried out by instructors, and which may hinder their use and adoption. Furthermore, some MOOC distinctive features (e.g., scale, 24/7 availability, etc.) have considerable implications on how these gamification strategies are orchestrated, resulting in an unmanageable instructors' workload in cases of manual operation. Therefore, an eventual adoption of gamification in MOOCs calls for automatic systems capable of decreasing the additional workload of instructors. The limitations identified in the current solutions (e.g., non-usable graphical interfaces, inflexible gamification designs) led us to propose and develop a new gamification system named GamiTool. An evaluation with 19 MOOC instructors and gamification designers showed the high design expressiveness, usability and potential for adoption of GamiTool. Hence, GamiTool can be used by instructors to improve students' engagement, and also, by researchers to keep understanding the effects of gamification in MOOC settings.

In-Browser Implementation of a Gamification Rule Definition Language Interpreter

“…Although gamification rules are often specified using visual form-based tools (see, e.g., [19,22,23]), which are simple to use by humans, from a technical point of view, it is the format they are conveyed in that matters for the complexity and speed of their processing. From the available gamification rule specification formats, we found the one proposed in [12] as particularly suitable for implementing a client-side rule processing engine, considering its relative simplicity in comparison to other such formats (e.g., [18,21]).…”

“…There are also other visual gamification rule editors based on forms, both developed by the research community (e.g., GamiTool [23]) and commercial companies (e.g., Gametize [24]). For visual editing, diagrams can also be used to convey the gamification rules (see, e.g., UAREI [25] or MEdit4CEP-Gam [26]).…”

Enhancing Student Motivation and Engagement through a Gamified Learning Environment

“…Finally, some studies have focused on designing and evaluating gamification tools for massive open online courses (MOOCs), which pose specific challenges and opportunities for engaging and motivating learners. For example, Ortega-Arranz et al [15] presented GamiTool, a web-based tool that supports instructors in the gamification of MOOCs. Their evaluation with MOOC instructors and gamification designers showed GamiTool's high design expressiveness, usability, and potential for adoption.…”