Gamified learning: A role-playing approach to increase student in-class motivation

A modern and successful tackle on education is represented by new teaching techniques which imply online courses, collaborative assignments, dynamic grading systems, real-time feedback and motivational inserts into the process of learning. Elearning together with massive open online courses (MOOCs) have seen a recent rise in popularity and integrate many of the aspects that enable distant students to take part in higher levels of education. While the perspective of migrating towards a pure online environment is in line with the trend of the younger generations, most professional and intellectual skills can only be effectively learned through physical attendance and practical guided work. Yet, the main concern highlighted in this paper is the weak point of most classic educational systems: the constant decreasing motivation it gives students - individuals who have grown and are embedded in many virtual realities form where they draw the needed intrinsic motivation and energy. To overcome this limitation, we introduce an educational platform named Gamified, which simplifies the educational and grading systems in modern schools and universities. It relies on the fundamental aspects of the theory of Gamification, namely bringing motivational elements from (video) games into non-game contexts. It does this through the abandonment of grades (seen by us as negative feedback, a demotivator), and integration of heroes, accumulated experience, levels, level-ups, achievements, quests, guilds, and other representative elements taken from role-playing games (positive feedback at different levels of motivation). Not only do these elements sound familiar to a vast majority of todays students, but they also trigger interest in the new approach to learning. We validate this technique over a period of 3 years on different generations of college students, compare the results with control groups, a present what we believe is remarkable feedback - both in terms of grades and participation, as well as in student attitude towards learning.