Gamification of a higher education course: What’s the fun in that?

Does play belong to the learning situation? What kind of sociability is promoted when gamifying education. This article explores how students' behaviours and interaction change when introducing game elements into a university course such as awarding points for different types of active participation during lessons. On the basis of the students’ response to and actions in course as well as the teachers’ experiences and observations, the article underlines the importance of understanding how the teacher can affect students' motivation, social contact and experience in the learning situation through a balanced use of learning, play elements and game elements.

The paper presents a qualitative data analysis (Flick, 2014) of observations, interviews and evaluation of a 5 ECTS courses on Gamification with 20 participating students at Aalborg University Copenhagen during the autumn 2013. The article's empirical data consists of observations of teaching and audio recordings of the first and last lecture in the course, a 45-minute interview with 14 students, 15 questionnaire responses and 16 student's written evaluation of the course. Furthermore, the empirical data include 19 responses from the students on their motivation to participate in the course.

The paper presents an analysis of students’ experience of interaction during the gamified course in relation to the use of frames (Bateson, 2000) and to the type of sociability (Simmel, 1979) in relation to play the paper. The paper thus contributes with a discussion of and findings in relation to the interaction we design for, when using game elements in a learning context. It is through these interactions with peers and teachers as well as by experimenting that students learn about the topic at hand. Inviting students to participate in a gamified course on gamification is a meta pedagogical approach that allow students to experience gamification and learn from it. This means that the educational design also sought to provoke students at times. We found that though playful competiveness among students promotes more activity, it does so at a cost as students find the approach stressful and limiting. On the other hand, playfulness that enhances affective and enjoyable sociability can leave room for experimenting and having fun – but does it distract students from the task at hand?