A Gamified Approach to Improving Student’s Participation in Farm Practice – A Case Study of Landmark University

Abstract

The importance of students’ involvement in classroom and non-classroom university courses cannot be overemphasized in the process of learning. But, students for several reasons must be motivated to enhance their continuous participation, especially in non-classroom courses. Landmark University is an agrarian-based institution and students are expected to actively take part in at least one agricultural course irrespective of their specializations. Students commitments to Farm Practice courses are core to graduation despite many students not meeting the expected level of dedication early. Gamification is the process of using game strategies and techniques to actively engage and motivate audiences and to solve problems. Using a database of agricultural resources from Landmark University Teaching and Research Farm, a prototype for a gamified mobile app for engaging students in Farm Practice is developed. Game features such as point, leaderboard, and scoresheet were embedded. The application performance was evaluated by a total of fifty students and 70% of the students claimed that their interests in Farm Practice were positively affected after using the app for the first time.