دانلود رایگان مقاله آموزش تحقیقات در عملیات برای دانشجویان: نقش گیمیفیکیشن

abstract

Gamification has been successfully applied in some educational environments, however there is a lack of studies considering gamification applied to Management university courses. In this paper, the experience of applying gamification in an Operations Research/ Management Science course taught to undergraduate management students will be described. The use of challenges, points, personalized feedback, badges and leaderboards was considered to implement the most important game mechanics and related dynamics. It was possible to observe an increase of students' participation in classes, an increase in the percentage of approved students and a better assessment of the course made by the students. Some recommendations on how to implement an Operations Research course for management students are also given.

9. Concluding remarks

Gamification could be a very useful tool for motivating students. The contents that are usually taught in operations research/management science courses are easily adapted to such a framework. The best thing would be to have a dedicated online platform so that gamification in teaching could reach another level. Each student could have an avatar, many different interactive activities could be delineated and the social interaction between students could be leveraged, virtual goods could be associated with the achievement of goals and the students could truly get a feeling of how they are advancing in the course, and in which level they are currently in. Although Moodle can support some gamification elements, like progress bars, display of quiz results and badges, for instance (Henrick, 2015), Moodle is not the best platform to support a truly gamified course.

The downside of choosing such a gamification approach is the very significant increase of workload related to the course. This has mainly to do with the fact that feedback on so many activities has to be given, as soon as possible and continuously throughout the semester, compared with having to assess written tests twice a semester.