Gamification as a strategy for promoting deeper investigation in a reverse engineering activity

Abstract

This paper explores the impacts of gamification on students' investigations in a reverse engineering activity. The activity, which occurs in the first month of a freshman design and communication cornerstone course, challenges students to develop an understanding of how design decisions are made and the trade-offs involved in realizing a work of engineering design. In the most recent iteration of the activity, we created a game whereby students were awarded achievement levels for (1) practicing safety, (2) developing an understanding of key design decisions (construed as Design for X [DfX]), and (3) making inferences for logical argumentation in discussion with instructors. Although the reverse engineering activity did not directly include significant rewards, we employed gamification to challenge students to achieve a broader set of tasks and to achieve these tasks in deeper and more nuanced ways. Our preliminary analysis of the gamification of the exercise investigates the teaching team experience, in particular the nature of their interactions with the students, the students' perception of the quality of the experience, and the students' results in the form of an oral presentation of their device teardown. This simple approach enhanced the students' collaboration, their ability to handle rebuttals and make solid arguments based on physical evidence, and their understanding of the significance of DfX. © 2012 American Society for Engineering Education.