The Story of the Hatter and the Agile Methods Course: Gamification and Game Thinking in Education

This is the story of a course in higher education that, over a period of ten years, went from being one of the most popular courses, among both students and teachers, to becoming one of the more problematic. Students and teachers felt that the course had many problems that needed to be addressed. For the course round of 2022, the decision was taken to redesign the course using gamification. Research on gamification in education is widespread and many have studied its effectiveness, with varying results. Most of the existing studies have a narrow view of gamification, which both limits its potential and is a risk for counterproductivity. Gamification in education requires careful planning and a game-thinking approach to the design of the learning environment. In this paper, I show how this can be done and what the outcomes may be. In the work, I draw upon motivation theory and gamification literature. Empirical insights are gained through analysing the course over the years and the outcome of the redesign. In this analysis, I make use of course evaluations, the results of a Kahoot quiz and student feedback. The contribution to research and practice is to show how courses can be redesigned into a gamified design that is good for both the students and the teachers.