Search

Personalized gamification explores user models to tailor gamification designs to mitigate cases wherein the one-size-fits-all approach ineffectively improves learning outcomes. The tailoring process should simultaneously consider user and contextual characteristics (e.g., activity to be done and geographic location), which leads to several combinations to tailor. Consequently, tools for automating gamification personalization are needed. However, which of those characteristics are relevant and how to do such tailoring are open questions. Furthermore, the required automating tools are lacking. We tackled these problems in two steps. First, we conducted an exploratory study, collecting participants' opinions on the game elements they consider the most useful for different learning activity types (LAT) via survey. Then, we modeled opinions through Conditional Decision Trees to address the aforementioned tailoring process. Second, as a product of the first step, we implemented a recommender system that suggests personalized gamification designs (which game elements to use), addressing the problem of automating gamification personalization. Our findings present empirical evidence that LAT, geographic locations, and other user characteristics affect users' preferences, enable defining gamification designs tailored to user and contextual features simultaneously, and provide technological aid for those interested in designing personalized gamification. The main implications are that demographics, game-related characteristics, geographic location, and LAT to be done, as well as the interaction between different kinds of information (user and contextual characteristics), should be considered in defining gamification designs and that personalizing gamification designs can be improved with aid from our recommender system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents the introductory editorial for this issue of the publication. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The design of collaborative learning (CL) scenarios that increase both students' learning and motivation is a challenge that the Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL) community has been addressing in the past few years. On one hand, CSCL design (i.e. scripts) has shown to be an effective approach to support meaningful interactions and better learning. On the other hand, scripted collaboration sometimes decrease motivation of students to participate in the CL process, which makes more difficult the use of group activities over time. To deal with the problem of motivation, researchers and educators are now looking at Gamification techniques to engage students. Gamification in education is a complex task that requires, from instructional designers, knowledge about game elements (such as leaderboards and point systems), game design (how to combine game elements) and their impact on motivation and learning. To help the adequate use of gamification in collaborative learning activities we have applied ontological engineering techniques to develop an Ontology called OntoGaCLeS in order to formalize the representation of gamification concepts and explain how they affect motivation in CL situations. This paper will present the ontological structure to represent gamified CL scenarios and show the utility of our approach to define personalized conceptual models to gamify CL scenario based on students' needs and individual characteristics. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Ontologies are formal representations of knowledge about a given domain. Based on them, it is possible to create more expressive knowledge bases that can be shared, extended and reused in different scenarios. In software engineering, ontologies can contribute in many different ways to improve the models, methods, techniques and processes of software development. Nevertheless, the use and benefits of ontologies and Semantic Web technologies in Software Engineering is spread across several articles and books available in the literature. In this context, this paper aims at compiling and presenting the research findings and potential benefits when applying ontologies to address three major challenges in software engineering: (1) difficulty in communicating and sharing information; (2) effective management of software development phases; and (3) development techniques and environments to support the production of semantic software through an interdisciplinary approach. We believe that the review of the literature and discussions presented in this work can contribute to disseminate best practices of using ontologies in software development as well as to give directions about this field of research, its challenges and opportunities [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]