A link between worlds: Towards a conceptual framework for bridging player and learner roles in gamified collaborative learning contexts

Abstract

Gamification has been widely used in education with mixed results. Some empirical findings indicate that gamification can increase motivation and engagement in students; other findings highlight that gamification can be a distraction to students; and therefore it may end up hindering learning. To deal with this problem, it is necessary to design gamification to fit properly in individual and collaborative learning contexts. Unfortunately, there is a lack of studies on frameworks mapping game elements and learning theories to support the adequate design and application of gamification in education. Moreover, most proposed solutions do not take into account the need for personalized gamification. To bridge this gap, we set out to create models and a vocabulary to represent learner-player roles interactions in gamified collaborative learning contexts. We developed a conceptual framework using these models and the vocabulary. To demonstrate the framework’s viability to design theory-based gamified collaborative learning scenarios, we describe a case study using the theory Peer Tutoring. Our conceptual framework is an effort to support the development of social software tailored towards improving the learners’ interactions, providing rich and systematic new ways to learn and to explore the knowledge.