Fun and Engagement in Lecture Halls through Social Gamification

Authors

  • Sebastian Mader Teaching and Research Unit Programming and Modelling Languages Institute for Informatics Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich Oettingenstraße 67 D-80538 Munich
  • François Bry Teaching and Research Unit Programming and Modelling Languages Institute for Informatics Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich Oettingenstraße 67 D-80538 Munich

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.3991/ijep.v9i2.10163

Keywords:

Gamification, Audience Response Systems, Online Learning Environments

Abstract


The traditional lecture is a teaching format which offers students few opportunities for engagement turning them into passive listeners of the lecturers’ presentations what negatively impacts on their learning. With audience response systems, that is technology supporting classroom quizzes, breaks which reactivate the students can be introduced into the lecturers’ presentations. This article reports on an audience response system coupled with a social gamification of quizzes based on teams: Each student is assigned to a team and the students’ answers to quizzes contribute to their team’s success. An immediate overview of team participation updated in real-time during the quiz and updated team standings after the quiz displayed for everyone to see motivate students to participate in the quizzes. The contribution of this article is threefold: First, a team-based social gamification of quizzes aimed at boosting participation in quizzes and attendance at lectures, second, original technological tools supporting the proposed team-based social gamification, and third, a first evaluation demonstrating its effectiveness in a small course and a second evaluation suggesting that for use in large classes teams have to be built in a specific way. This article is an extended version of an article presented at ICL 2018 which provides a deeper representation of related work, a more extensive description of the team component, an additional evaluation, and implications for the use of the team-based social gamification in large classes.

Author Biographies

Sebastian Mader, Teaching and Research Unit Programming and Modelling Languages Institute for Informatics Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich Oettingenstraße 67 D-80538 Munich

Sebastian Mader is a research associate at the Institute for Informatics at Ludwig Maximilians University of Munich, Germany.

François Bry, Teaching and Research Unit Programming and Modelling Languages Institute for Informatics Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich Oettingenstraße 67 D-80538 Munich

François Bry is a full professor at the Institute for Informatics at Ludwig Maximilians University of Munich, Germany.

Downloads

Published

2019-04-15

How to Cite

Mader, S., & Bry, F. (2019). Fun and Engagement in Lecture Halls through Social Gamification. International Journal of Engineering Pedagogy (iJEP), 9(2), pp. 117–136. https://doi.org/10.3991/ijep.v9i2.10163

Issue

Section

Papers