Design of gamified asynchronous online discussions

ABSTRACT

This article proposes a gamification approach that aims to motivate students in online discussions. While some efforts have been made in gamification for teaching and learning, insufficient attention has been paid to gamification grounded in both theories and evidence from empirical studies. After identifying five motivational needs of students from the literature on online discussions, this article offers five design guidelines to address these five needs by taking a gamification approach. Each guideline consists of several implementations of how to effectively use common game elements to address each of the needs. The implementations were constructed based on theories pulled from the literature on games and prior studies on gamification in teaching and learning. Implications for research and development are discussed.

KEYWORDS:

• Gamification
• online discussion
• design
• motivation

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest has been reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Lu Ding

Lu Ding is an instructional designer in the Faculty Development and Innovation Center at Eastern Illinois University (EIU). She received her PhD from the University of Georgia in the Learning, Design, and Technology programme. Before joining EIU, she was a postdoctoral scholar associate at Arizona State University in the Learning and Cognition Lab for two years. Her research interests focus on distance education, and specifically centre on promoting student engagement and deep learning by using innovative approaches, such as gamification and dialogue videos.

ChanMin Kim

ChanMin Kim is Associate Professor of Learning, Design, and Technology and Educational Psychology at Pennsylvania State University. She researches various designs for improving critical aspects of STEM learning such as engagement and reasoning. Her current research involves study of reasoning during playful learning.

Michael Orey

Michael Orey is Associate Professor in the programme of Learning, Design, and Technology at the University of Georgia. Dr Orey has focused his efforts on meeting the needs of today’s learners, through various technologies, using a learner-centred experience. His projects included a project in the Institute of Plant Breeding, Genetics and Genomics, where students created a game to teach players about the history of plant breeding, and a project with Disney’s Club Penguin, where students embedded education into games for kids.