Generation Z and gamification: The pedagogical drawing of a new educational society

Abstract

The educator of the 21st Century is being part of a pedagogical imbalance that crashes against the peculiarities of Generation Z students, who are eager to be part of a learning experience equal to their digital reality. Generation Z students embody some features that are requiring new ways to understand the learning process along with new tools to stimulate it. Under those circumstances gamification can offer one of its greatest virtues: rectify and increase the motivation levels of a whole group that reveals a notoriously low implication in class. This article specifies who are the individuals shaping Generation Z by explaining their characteristics and analyzes how these attributes reorient their learning attitude. Furthermore, it contextualizes the role of technology and digital tools within current teaching methods. Lastly, this work examines in detail gamification as an innovation technique by scrutinizing the elements who shape it, their typology and the different phases that link their process in order to enable a learning experience in line with the particularities of nowadays students.