Leveling up by gamifying freshman engineering clinic

Abstract

This Work-In-Progress paper describes the development of a gamification platform for a multidisciplinary freshman design course at Rowan University. This course is designed to teach engineering students about multidisciplinary design, with special focus on developing skills associated with teamwork, software application and ethics. An important part of learning is receiving feedback as part of the learning cycle and studies have shown that increased feedback can be helpful in supporting student reflection and developing the intrinsic motivation necessary for mastering a task. One method of encouraging students to master material is by providing students with immediate feedback through gamification platforms. The gamification platform being employed in this implementation uses interactive learning techniques to provide students with clear cut goals as well as immediate feedback as an indicator of the student's performance. Gamification transforms the traditional homework layout into an entirely new entity. Students can work to earn badges by completing assignments that interest them within the platform. Students also have the power to learn at their own pace and mechanics such as experience points, badges, leaderboards, and achievements can be used as motivating factors to encourage student completion of activities. In addition, the system acts as a scaffold for the students starting with activities that are easier and become progressively more challenging as their knowledge increases while allowing them to repeat tasks as necessary to encourage mastery of course material. The effectiveness of this platform will be assessed by a combination of quantitative and qualitative measures. Student activity completion, accrual of badges and achievements, and the process through which students select the activities to pursue will all be monitored. Students will also complete the MUSIC model of academic motivation to measure their engagement with class activities as a result of the addition of the gamification platform. Qualitative feedback from students will be collected through focus groups to gain a better appreciation for how the gamification platform impacted their course experience.