Gamification for Teaching Java

Abstract

The term 'gamification' refers to the use of game elements in non-game environments like education, business, sales and marketing. The method of 'gamifying' has been applied in many different contexts and for many different reasons; for instance, in order to improve productivity, to increase sales, to motivate employees and customers, et al. In recent years, educators began to investigate the effects of different gamification elements within the context of education. There has been a considerable debate regarding the actual effects of gamification on the intrinsic motivation of students towards learning, and many research have been conducted in order to discover the results of 'gamifying' any specific course curriculum. Each research study has revealed another impediment, supported by multiple review studies that revealed significant problems with some of the methods of majority of studies in the research area now known as the 'gamification of education'. This paper explains the design, analysis and implementation process of an open-source gamification platform, which is aimed at providing a gamification platform for education, while also explaining a preliminary survey conducted on an Introduction to Java course. The platform was developed using multiple technologies and frameworks related to the Java programming language while the survey was conducted at third level education students through a quantitative questionnaire.