Gamification in Educational Contexts

Gamification as a tool or procedure to add entertaining and motivating elements to usually non-entertaining environments such as schools or workplaces is becoming more and more popular. E-learning platforms like Moodle provide tools and sets of functions to add elements of gamification. An important factor, especially for education, is technology: individual achievements and progress can be recorded, measured, tracked and visualized and, therefore, identified and honored through bonus points, awards or rankings. This is where gamification can add some challenge and excitement to learning.

Incorporating Kahoot! in core engineering courses: Student engagement and performance

Technology-enriched lessons can contribute to improving student engagement and learning in engineering courses. In this study we systematically incorporated Kahoot!, a game-based response system, in two mandatory content-intensive undergraduate engineering courses. In both courses, short quizzes were incorporated regularly at the beginning of the lesson. The questions were mostly about concepts, and students earned bonus points. At the end of the course, the students filled in an anonymous survey regarding their perceptions of the Kahoot! part of the lessons. In addition, the students’ grades in the final test were compared to their gains in the Kahoot! quizzes. We found that student satisfaction with the systematic incorporation of the Kahoot! quizzes was high in both courses. Most students were motivated to review the course content before class and about half were motivated to attend class. Most students perceived Kahoot! quizzes as contributing to their understanding of the course content. We also found a positive association between student success in the quizzes and their performance in the final exam in both courses. The frequent Kahoot! quizzes supplied continuous feedback to the students and lecturers, and the students became more engaged in the course content. Our findings indicate that technology-enriched strategies, specifically gamification techniques, contribute to increased student engagement, motivation, and performance in content-intensive engineering courses.

Data sharing practices and data availability upon request differ across scientific disciplines

Data sharing is one of the cornerstones of modern science that enables large-scale analyses and reproducibility. We evaluated data availability in research articles across nine disciplines in Nature and Science magazines and recorded corresponding authors’ concerns, requests and reasons for declining data sharing. Although data sharing has improved in the last decade and particularly in recent years, data availability and willingness to share data still differ greatly among disciplines. We observed that statements of data availability upon (reasonable) request are inefficient and should not be allowed by journals. To improve data sharing at the time of manuscript acceptance, researchers should be better motivated to release their data with real benefits such as recognition, or bonus points in grant and job applications. We recommend that data management costs should be covered by funding agencies; publicly available research data ought to be included in the evaluation of applications; and surveillance of data sharing should be enforced by both academic publishers and funders. These cross-discipline survey data are available from the plutoF repository.

Incentives on E-Commerce App Downloads in Medium Apps: A Case Study on the Effects of Coupons and Bonus Points

With the spread of mobile smartphone apps among consumers, they have also become increasingly important for e-commerce companies in recent years to attract customers. A central challenge in the use of smartphone apps by companies is the acquisition and activation of new app users. This case study examines how incentives like coupons and bonus points to download an e-commerce app via other smartphone apps, so-called "medium apps", have an effect. After a review of existing literature on similar topics, hypotheses regarding the probability of installation and actual app usage are developed and tested in an experiment. The hypotheses can be confirmed to a large extent, but especially coupons for the advertised online shop that publishes the e-commerce app do not show the expected effect. Further research questions are identified and practical recommendations for app marketing are derived.

Promoting Active Learning for Increasing Students’ Understanding of the Teaching Materials: A Report on Teaching Experience in Computer Science

Knowledge gap among students is one of the challenges in teaching-learning process. Active learning can be one way to the solution, as study shows that active learning increase students’ achievement. Knowledge transfer between peers can have its place in an active class, since group discussion is part of the class design. We have been applying active learning in our classes where students were invited to teach in small groups or in class. This study aims at collecting feedbacks from students whether the class designs give positive impacts to students’ understandings of the teaching material. Thirty-six students fill out the questionnaire in Google Form anonymously about the activities in our class settings in the past semester. The result shows that active learning increases students’ understanding of the teaching materials. Active learning motivates students to study and to share knowledge with peers in small groups as we have bonus points for individual and for group. We conclude that our class design that promotes active learning can bridge the knowledge gap between students.

ANALYSIS OF LAND IN PROTECTED AREAS OF GAS PIPELINES OF DIFFERENT PRESSURE ON THE EXAMPLE OF THE FERGHANA REGION

Protection zones of underground and aboveground gas pipelines with different pressure indicators are of great importance not only for safety, also and for present and future land use. The use of these lands for domestic and agricultural needs, with the correct organization of cadastral relations, is relevant to this issue. At the same time, an example is provided of a gas transport pipeline section with a pressure indicator of 6 kgf/sm2. KEY WORDS: security zones, land plot, information about zones, zones with high pressure, gas lines, gas pipelines, bonus points, engineering networks, various buildings, construction of buildings and structures.

A Variance Gamma model for Rugby Union matches

Amid much recent interest we discuss a Variance Gamma model for Rugby Union matches (applications to other sports are possible). Our model emerges as a special case of the recently introduced Gamma Difference distribution though there is a rich history of applied work using the Variance Gamma distribution – particularly in finance. Restricting to this special case adds analytical tractability and computational ease. Our three-dimensional model extends classical two-dimensional Poisson models for soccer. Analytical results are obtained for match outcomes, total score and the awarding of bonus points. Model calibration is demonstrated using historical results, bookmakers’ data and tournament simulations.

T222. IMPAIRED COST-BENEFIT COMPUTATION IN SOCIAL CONTEXT IN PATIENTS WITH SCHIZOPHRENIA

Background Social withdrawal is one of core negative symptoms in schizophrenia, which dampens their social outcomes and prognosis. However, the underlying behavioral mechanisms of this symptom are poorly understood. In the present study, we aimed to explore the capacity of cost-benefit computation under social context in schizophrenia patients. Methods We recruited twenty-six patients, who met the criteria for diagnosis of schizophrenia, and thirty-one healthy controls matched for their age and gender ratio. All the participants were administrated to Effortful Job Interview Task, which is a novel behavioral paradigm where participants were asked to make an effort to get job offers. Before their taking effort, they were required to decide whether they would like to get involved in a less challenging job interview with no bonus point or a more challenging one with varied bonus points (i.e., 5, 15, 25 points, higher points indicate higher chance of getting a job offer). Results In healthy controls, there was a main effect of prize on the choice percentage of challenging job interview (F (2, 90) = 68.577, p <0.001), with higher percentage of picking challenging interview under large (25) and medium (15) bonus points than low bonus point (5). Schizophrenia patients, however, exhibited lower percentage of challenging interview choices under medium (p =.015) and large (p <.01) bonus points than healthy controls, as reflected by a significant Group x Prize interaction effect (F (2, 110) = 6.478, p <0.01). In addition, we observe significant negative correlations between percentage of challenging interview choices under large bonus and amotivation sub-score on the Scale for the Assessment of Negative Symptoms (r = -0.49, p = 0.01). Interestingly, patients with schizophrenia displayed spared experience of pleasantness when they received a job offer as compared with healthy controls (p = .09). But, they showed blunted aversive experience towards the outcomes of failure as compared to healthy controls (p < .01). Discussion These findings suggest that impaired social cost-benefit computation may play a central role in the symptoms of social withdrawal in schizophrenia, which may facilitate the clinical intervention of negative symptoms.