Gamifying the way you learn is crucial as it helps you motivate and improve your study. Gamification help develop an approach for increasing learners’ motivation and engagement by incorporating game design elements in educational environments.

Proponents of gamification reinforce necessary skills in education, such as problem-solving, collaboration, and communication, and learning becomes visible through progress indicators. Students may uncover an intrinsic motivation for learning, explore different identities through different avatars or characters, and are more comfortable in gaming environments, so they are more proactive and open to making mistakes. More importantly, students feel like they have ownership over their learning.

The benefits of Gamification can be many as it desires to combine intrinsic motivation with extrinsic one to raise motivation and engagement. Intrinsic motivations come from within; the user/actor decides whether to make an action or not; some examples are altruism, competition, cooperation, sense of belonging, love or aggression. Extrinsic motivations, on the other hand, occur when something or someone determines the user to make an action, for example, classifications, levels, points, badges, awards, missions (Viola, 2011)

When designing the Gamification of the course, we try to answer the following questions: why do we gamify a service, what are the goals and what are the benefits expected. It is essential to take into consideration the subject we are addressing.

Common game design principles are visible status, social engagement, freedom of choice, freedom to fail, and rapid feedback (Dicheva et al., 2015). Visible status informs students about a task’s completion status or else shows students how they are progressing. Social engagement feeds into purported needs for competition against individuals or teams (O’Donovan et al., 2013). Still, it may include team projects and group learning opportunities (Mak, 2013) and cooperation and interaction with classroom peers (Landers and Callan, 2011). Freedom of choice implies that students are free to choose whichever task(s) they want to complete.

Simply adding game mechanics to a non-game situation to make it less boring is a narrow view of Gamification. A broad definition of Gamification incorporates the building of a game to promote the learning of specific content (Serious games and play-based learning). (Kapp, 2012, p. 16 – 17)
Another essential element of constructivism is collaboration. Collaboration is a valuable 21st Century skill that enables students to generate more profound levels of knowledge, think critically and creatively and share a learning goal with others. Game designers and educators need to work together to ensure that games are engaging and consider the constraints of the classroom environment. A good game-based learning application would also include support materials such as instructions, teacher training and lesson plans (Routledge, 2009). Further research into the impact of games on students should positively affect fun design in the future (Routledge, 2009).

Gamification of learning is applying game design elements to learning activities – it is currently a hot, if controversial, trend in education. Gamification makes teaching more fun and engaging without undermining its credibility and helps students gain motivation towards studying. Also, they get pushed forwards because of the positive feedback and become more interested and stimulated to learn.

Overall, we can use this means to create more effective and engaging e-learning applications. Gamification can constitute a powerful boost to determine them to study/read more.

Reference

Muntean, C.I., 2011, October. Raising engagement in e-learning through gamification. In Proc. 6th international conference on virtual learning ICVL (Vol. 1, pp. 323-329).

Dichev, C., Dicheva, D. Gamifying education: what is known, what is believed and what remains uncertain: a critical review. Int J Educ Technol High Educ 14, 9 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1186/s41239-017-0042-5

Kapp, K. M. (2012). The gamification of learning and instruction : game-based methods and strategies for training and education. Wiley.  Retrieved from EBook Library.

Rabah, J., Cassidy, R. and Beauchemin, R., 2018, November. Gamification in education: Real benefits or edutainment. In Kidmore End: Academic Conferences International Limited (pp. 489-496).

Routledge, H. (2009). Games-based learning in the classroom and how it can work!. In T. Connolly, M. Stansfield, & L. Boyle (Eds.) Games-Based learning advancements for multi-sensory human computer interfaces: Techniques and effective practices. 274-286. Hershey, PA: . doi:10.4018/978-1-60566-360-9.ch016.

Digital Essay – The Gamification of Learning | Virtual Quest (2015). Available at: https://thinkspace.csu.edu.au/diginanna/2015/05/30/digital-essay-the-gamification-of-learning/ (Accessed: 7 May 2021).

We have been swiftly going about more into ethical, environmental, healthy concepts and cautious of what we are doing. Health is a significant part of our everyday lives, so why not gamify it? Gamifying your exercise through an app store fitness tracker can help boost you to form healthy habits. Gamification is transforming the health industry and offer advantages for motivating behaviour change for health and well-being to improve the human condition. Due to the impact of technology, changing customer demands and the general adoption of new habits.

Gamification will change the traditional image of healthcare by using technology as a catalyst for change. Applying gamification in healthcare will change how you interact with your doctor and your family- so that everyone can be healthier. Improve patient clinical outcomes, monitor progress, and select the most appropriate ones for a given patient. This trend establishes the need for a “digital practitioner.”

With the explosion of healthcare game products, patients compete with themselves by challenging personal goals to achieve high score validation, whereas, in other applications, patients compete against other individuals. Moreover, engaging patients by gamifying and motivating patient-controlled behaviours in term of gamification has already been studied in a wide variety of disease states. Therefore, it attracts researchers in the e-health realm in the second half of 2010.

By integrating software design and game mechanics with public health theory and behavioural insights, patients can improve their health on the application and smartphones. The health industry is quickly changing due to the impact of technology, shifting customer expectations and the general adoption of new habits. Gamification provides a powerful catalyst for change. The result? Consumers are learning and having fun at the same time! It is the new way of learning to make medical operations fun and interesting.

Thus, increase in the perceived value of the service and motivation levels by invoking progress-related psychological biases and elicit more or better use of the service. These are applications on the phone like, medication adherence programs, health education, weight loss apps, fitness apps and chronic disease management apps. Using real-time biofeedback from motion-capture sensors and gesture-control technology, it great for patients and some telehealth programs to educate patients, health workers and the general populace in remote and rural areas.

With gamification, the healthcare industry can improve and a fun way to increase engagement across healthcare organizations. I believe that the future of healthcare looks a lot like the present of gaming and is to create better healthcare on a mission to empower clinicians, patients and caregivers. In my opinion, gamification help healthcare is essential and selectively applied to how care is coordinated and delivered to patients, potentially leading to better outcomes.

There is many more gamification regrading on health applications that I been using as I would love to recommend some of the application that I been using:

My Fitness Pal
It is a smartphone app and website that tracks diet and exercise. The app uses gamification elements to motivate users. Users can either scan the barcodes of various food items or manually find them in the app’s sizeable pre-existing database to track nutrients.

I have used this to track how many calories to consume, and the reason behind it is that I want to lose weight and eat healthier.

Step Tracker
Step Tracker application, which is helping me keep an eye on their activity levels by tracking the number of steps a person takes.
The app may also generate graphs and statistics relating to a person’s physical activity. This allows me to monitor my level of activity in greater detail.
I start a custom weight loss program and helps me adopt healthy habits to lose weight and keep it off. It is customized to my goals and fitness needs.

Get your health application to adventure your weight loss journey and be health-conscious.

Reference

“There’s no one without purpose in a game. That’s what Gamification is all about.”

― Vineet Raj Kapoor

Our social life has been linked and integrated with the digital world of technology and internet access—our lifestyle changes as technology advances for our convenience and better quality of life. The generation now has been the most avid consumer of the online world and with its benefits and we extremely receptive and adapted to the unprecedented advancement. Our perception on social life has changed drastically due to the pandemic and have been upgraded in the way we share our life experience. With the popularity of social media platforms like Tik Tok, Twitter, Instagram and so on, we are more than connecting and broadcasting our lives globally by sharing our moments via a post or short video clips. Add Image Digitally speaking, we have advanced with our online Personas going into “gamification” modes and features.

The big tech companies have been involving and investing in more game-like contents. The last 15 years have seen the rise of the digital game medium in entertainment, popular culture, and the academic field. While social networking has already demonstrated its efficiency in e-learning, Gamification, which uses game-thinking and playful design in non-game contexts, has only shown its potential as a motivational tool. The idea of our life as a game is not new.

The variety of the activities that we do have been rewarded points for doing voluntary work, which we do every day and have reflected on our social status. Online communities and social networks offer individuals the opportunity to engage with like minds, generate discussion and build relationships around specific topics. In two papers, Bista et al. (2012a, 2012b) outlined the design of a government-sponsored online community for individuals receiving welfare interested in returning to the workforce. So what is Gamification, and how does it apply to social media.

Gamification has two key ingredients: it is used for non-entertainment purposes. It draws inspiration from games, particularly the elements that make up games without engendering a fully-fledged game. Thus transforming ‘game of life to the new meaning of our social contexts. Without realising that we been using some sort of Gamification, it creates our social progress feeling awarded, achieved and tangible. Humans have evolved to be stimulating with problem-solving, learning and gameplay and, in return, small rewards for incremental progress.

Cramer et al. (2011) investigated how people were motivated to use Foursquare, a location-sharing app known for its use of status in the form of “mayorships” earned by frequent customers. Results indicated that motivation through Gamification was mixed. For example, motivation dropped when mayorships were perceived to be unobtainable. Gamification is currently driven by video games’ success and momentum, but it also draws on different psychological theories, primarily using motivational models. Self-determination theory (Ryan & Deci, 2000) identifies two types of motivation, extrinsic and intrinsic, and depicts a sort of continuum from one to the other. In the world of academics, practitioners, and business professionals in domains as diverse as education, information studies, human-computer interaction, and health, we noticed the importance of Gamification applied to help develop an approach for encouraging user motivation, engagement and enjoyment in non-gaming, computer-mediated environments.

Gamification is excellent for use in different professional areas and personal to better and improve how we live, work and think efficiently in our daily lives. Life will undoubtedly make this game a little more rewarding and worth playing.

I would love to explore more what Gamification can influence and benefits like structure, which can be recorded and documented and permit authentic sharing of experiences while also rewarding the players. It is bound to make people think twice before they upload anything on the internet and undertake challenges only if they can complete them.

Stay tuned to the next blog.

References

de-Marcos, Luis, Domínguez, Adrián, Saenz-de-Navarrete, Joseba &  Pagés, Carmen 2014, ‘An empirical study comparing gamification and social networking on e-learning’, Computers & Education, vol. 75, June 2014, pp. 82-91.

Seaborn, K. and Fels, D.I., 2015. Gamification in theory and action: A survey.International Journal of human-computer studies, 74, pp.14-31.https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1071581914001256

William, H.(Jan 14, 2019) The Gamification of Social Media.https://www.meltwater.com/en/blog/the-gamification-of-social-media?fbclid=IwAR3gw1aURdr75HiK8N6vQvQ2qi5LmfaNCa4mVGb_Jsf33MakJIldeEOvjb8

Cramer, H., Rost, M., Holmquist, L.E., 2011. Performing a check-in: emerging practices, norms and “conflicts” in location-sharing using foursquare. In: Proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Human–Computer Inter- action with Mobile Devices and Services. Presented at MobileHCI’11. ACM, pp. 57–66

You have leveled up! How Gamification Can Change The Way You Share Your Life Experiences. (2018). Available at: https://medium.com/@Borderless/you-have-leveled-up-how-gamification-can-change-the-way-you-share-your-life-experiences-7b53dc0343b7 (Accessed: 27 April 2021).

Jones, E. (April, 2021). Gamification to increase social media engagement. (2021) Ellisjones.com.au. Available at: https://ellisjones.com.au/using-gamification-increase-social-media-engagement/ (Accessed: 27 April 2021).

Networking and connecting with people is more accessible, but having more robust interconnection is another thing that I view here. However, adding new people or seeing new people, and even friending people online have been more obviously manageable ever since the pandemic and engaging with our online platforms. It is interesting to transform our socials in online communities, and putting myself out has been quite a roller coaster ride for me.

This year, like last year with ALM101, I present some graphics, information, discussion, and more to the ALM201 community each week on Twitter. Whist keeping in touch and with my classmates, seeing what they are doing as well.

I found myself engaging within the Burmese community more than others as I am from Myanmar and have ongoing political issues in Myanmar. My engagement grows not just on Twitter but on other socials like Facebook, Instagram, and just that, learning what social media works and blogging and trying news mediums of media.

Understanding Gamification

At first thought, I think everyone thinks that Gamification is something to do with gaming experiences and have to do somewhat of design and media of how gaming works. 

So what is it? Gamification is technological, economic, cultural, and societal developments in terms of game-design elements and game principles. Thus to a greater extent, can afford the accruing of skills, motivational benefits, creativity, playfulness, engagements. 

Gamification is everywhere; just we don’t know what the name is. Let me paint you an example: I was a child, the doughnut store that I love, and have rewards on how much money you spend or if you are buying a particular doughnut or number. We have to fill the card to have small rewards like getting free three doughnuts, drinks to a bigger prize like getting pokemon plushies or getting collectable keychains like animes figurines, etc. 

Games and game-like elements have been used to Educate, Entertain and Engage for thousands of years. Gamification is not a new concept. It can be points/badges, timers, a story/narrative, even avatars whose pervasive role of games in our human lives transform into ones that are increasingly reminiscent of games, game communities, and player practices.

Experiencing Gamification

I learn about Gamification because we use it every day at work, in our personal use, and everywhere. I hope that could expand Gamification’s knowledge more in terms of design, and it will be an exciting topic to talk about it. Even though the podcast that I make is short, I hope that the listener’s engagement will put a comment or have a reaction that Gamification is not the new trend. I give the example of the application that everyone knows, and I hope the listeners will provide more examples.

I do like doing a podcast. However, it will be better to have a partner to have a better discussion on the topic. I do not have a lot of challenges, but my anxiety is going to the roof. It will be better if I do visuals of what is Gamification as a video and even have a discussion with experts on Gamification.

This is the my first podcast

We live in a world where the post, the tweet and a video have a significant impact on our daily lives. The way we see the world’s issues, whether it is online or offline, we have something to say, act and be part of something important.

Now we have social media as the platform to voice our opinions and share image or video what is going on with the world. People who are doing activism are not just doing the traditional aspects of activism, and they are conveying their concerns and issues online. Hence, social media become a bigger part of the part for social change to promote awareness.

My topic of Online Activism is “What possibilities and risks do social media offer activists attempting to drive social change?” and seeing the context and contents of what Online activism and to have the impact for social change.

My view of online activism is social media offers a lot of impacts to get and raise awareness that the activists take advantage, apply and give information crossed to the people and pushed their agenda. So, I want to see what social media can offer and the risks and benefits that activists get through while in activism.

I created a podcast about what is online activism and in details with some examples. When researching, I know that I had to explain; what is Social media, activism and how it works. I had to read through social media and activism study guides that my lecturer has given on the moodle by looking at the readings lists. As for the examples that I want to put for online activism, I remember what I did last year for climate strike event and had to look up what they have achieved. I read through the online example of the risk that I can find as it is challenging as there are many positives for using social media with activism.

During the scripting, it wasn’t easy for me as I had to script it well enough to make it interesting for my audience. As soon as I script what to say, the details and how I am going to structure it, I started recording.

Recording for the podcast is another level of difficulties as I realise that it is a lot more different from voice- over. I had to pace myself the way that I talk and controlling to breathe between the lines. As English is my second language Through recording my scripts, I had to readjust and rewrite the script. However, I slowly learned the curve of recording the way I talk and make it clear of what I am saying.

This podcast is a new experience for me because I wanted to do for a long time with a friend. Doing the podcast alone is great, but I think it will be better with someone to discuss and share opinions on the topic or issue. My first try on the podcast is interesting, and I hope that my audience enjoys my podcast.

References:

• Gerbaudo, P 2014, “Tweets and the Streets: Social Media and Contemporary Activism, Pluto”, New York.
• Cabrera, N 2017, ‘Activism or Slacktivism? The Potential and Pitfalls of Social Media’, Journal of Higher Education, vol. 10, no. 4, pp. 400-15
• Chalkley, T, Hobbs, M, & Brown, 2015, “Communication, Digital Media and Everyday Life”, OUPANZ, Melbourne. Available from: ProQuest Ebook Central. [15 December 2019].
• Dolsak, N and Prakash, A,  Sep 14, 2019, “Climate Strikes: What They Accomplish And How They Could Have More Impact” https://www.forbes.com/sites/prakashdolsak/2019/09/14/climate-strikes-what-they-accomplish-and-how-they-could-have-more-impact/#275234d95eed
• Ghobadi, S, July 17, 2018, “Going viral: what social media activists need to know” http://theconversation.com/going-viral-what-social-media-activists-need-to-know-96043
• Al-Sharif, M., 2016. Opinion | The Dangers Of Digital Activism. [online] Nytimes.com. Available at: <https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/16/opinion/politics/the-dangers-of-digital-activism.html>
• Make Ya Moves by Pold https://soundcloud.com/pold-music :Creative Commons — Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported — CC BY-SA 3.0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/ Music promoted by Music for Creators https://youtu.be/tsc4CodoGTw
• The Reckoning by AERØHEAD https://soundcloud.com/aerohead:Creative Commons — Attribution 3.0 Unported — CC BY 3.0 Free Download / Stream: https://bit.ly/the-reckoning-aerohead Music promoted by Audio Library https://youtu.be/NQk5C6Z_WOA