Gamification in higher education: the learning perspective

Abstract

During the last decades there has been a great development of utilitarian systems, applied to the most varied areas, in which games are found. Digital games (or video games) entered everyday life at an increasing rate and became a popular form of entertainment enjoyed by people of all age and social groups (Williams et al., 2009). The first videogames came from a playful reappropriation of oscilloscopes (Tavinor, 2009). Since then, there has been a wide spread of game consoles (from Pong in 1972 to Xbox in 2002, etc.) as well as other video game applications. For example, in 2011, Gartner predicted that gamed-in information systems and services would become an integral part of organizational systems such as consumer goods marketing and customer loyalty with 70 percent of the largest organizations, according to (Burke, 2011) to have at least an application with principles of gamification. These forecasts went even further and the entrance of the gamification extended to the most diverse areas, namely Healthcare, Education, Finance, Wellness, and Corporate Governance. The use of gamification in unlikely areas such as politics, it is a growing trend as described in (Angelovska, 2019) “this coincides with the beginning of the 2020 US political campaigns.” Despite hype and growth expectations, several applications fail with gamification, leading to the appearance of designations like “game over for gamification” (Smith, 2015). This situation is justified by the way the gamification was used and one of the examples illustrating this same misuse is the experience of motivating housekeepers to become more efficient at Disneyland and at the Paradise Pier Hotels. The failure was related to the existence of public monitors that showed placards with efficiency numbers in green for the fastest employees, and red for the others. However, despite the unsuccessful experiences, gamification continues to be seen as a “tool” with great potential, as companies continue to invest in gamification projects, with estimates suggesting a market growth of 48% by 2019 ( Technavio, 2015), and with values in 2016 of 4.91 billion US dollars to nearly 12 billion in 2021 (Statista, 2018).