Interacting in a Gamified Environment in Higher Education: Research on Collaborative and Competitive Practices

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to investigate higher education teachers' perspectives on incorporating gamification into their courses. Q Methodology is used to gather teachers' subjective views. Fifteen higher education teachers from the UK and Saudi Arabia, who have adopted gamification in their practice, participated in this study. The data collection included 15 Q-sorts, clarification of their ranking of the statements using informed think- aloud tasks, and post-sort interviews which included open-ended and demographic questions. For data analysis, two methods were used. First, the Q analysis was performed, and two factors were identified as representing different orientations of higher education instructors towards the use of gamification in their pedagogical activities. Second, thematic analysis was used to analyse the data collected from the informed think-aloud tasks and the post-sort interviews. The findings of this research indicated that two different perspectives of teachers, which are the “Social Drivers” and the “Digital Individualistic Formative Assessment Drivers”, are aligned with disciplinary pedagogy. Participants working in the Humanities fields focused on social involvement while creating gamified activities to foster a sense of community, bonding and relatedness through collaborative approaches. Participants from Scientific disciplines design activities for individual experience as a formative assessment in a digital/online setting. Further, the study shows how gamification enables social bonding (relatedness) among students. Moreover, the teacher's role in the gamified activities may vary between facilitator, player, and observer depending on the goal intended for the gamified activity. In addition, there are many difficulties in implementing gamification in the context of summative assessment. The conflict between strict institutional requirements of summative assessment and gamified learning highlights that there are a lot of challenges in implementing this aspect. Lastly, the findings highlighted how important competition is in gamified learning settings. Competition, when used carefully, may be a strong incentive for students, encouraging them to perform well and connect with the subject matter more fully.