Gamification in Engineering Education and ...

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Nov 4, 2011 - Technical University of Athens, Heroon Polytechniou 9, 15780, Athens, ... gamification practices in education and e-learning are considered.
Gamification in Engineering Education and Professional Training Angelos P. Markopoulos1*, Anastasios Fragkou2, Petros D. Kasidiaris2 and J. Paulo Davim3 1

Section of Manufacturing Technology, School of Mechanical Engineering, National Technical University of Athens, Heroon Polytechniou 9, 15780, Athens, Greece 2

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Hellenic Navy Petty Officers Academy, Skaramagkas, 12400, Greece

Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Aveiro, Campus Santiago, 3810193 Aveiro, Portugal.

*

Corresponding author: [email protected], +30 2107724299

Abstract: The incorporation of game mechanics and dynamics in non-gaming applications is a subject of interest in various sectors such as education, marketing, medicine and military, in the last few years. It is believed that engineering education in a pre-graduate level and in professional practice will bring high pay-offs. The role of the academia is to develop new methodologies and tools to produce, apply and use digital games and gamification techniques in contemporary industry and present scientific evidence on the value and the benefits derived from this technology. In this paper, the relative literature is evaluated and a discussion on the gamification status today is given, by examining various aspects of this novel term. Furthermore, game techniques, gamification practices in education and e-learning are considered. Special discussion on

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engineering games, gamification platforms and empirical surveys is presented with focus on manufacturing.

Keywords: gamification, serious games, education, training, manufacturing

1 Introduction

Learning practices in the form of games between teacher and students or trainer and trainees can be traced back to Ancient Greece. However, this practice has become a popular trend and has intensified its presence in several sectors only recently; gamification as an academic field is still in its infancy and is treated as an original idea. A definition that is frequently cited in relative works presents gamification as the incorporation of game elements into non-game contexts.1 The word gamification could refer to games created with the purpose of turning a tedious task into an engaging activity. However, it would be desirable to include educational features to the process. Furthermore, gamification may refer to the evolvement of an existing structure, like a website, an enterprise application or an online community, to an educational tool by applying some of the techniques and ideas that make games engaging. In other words gamification is the strategy which uses game mechanics and techniques in order to drive user behaviour by increasing self-contribution. Gamification has drawn the attention of

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business professionals besides the academia and is exercised in sectors such as engineering, medicine and military. It is presented in several forms, e.g. “storytelling” and “points, badges and leaderboards” practises, and described as serious games, pointification, behavioural games and games with a purpose. The aforementioned alternative terms although are similar present differences. Seaborn and Fels2 presented a survey study that summarizes gamification theory and clarifies several definitions of gamification and the related concepts. Gamification is treated by industries as a tool for supplementing branding initiatives or a tool for business strategy.3,4 It is considered the next generation marketing campaign and it is estimated that more than 50% of organizations that manage innovation processes will gamify some aspects of their business by 2015.5 In the business world and from the standpoint of the entity that applies gamification on its processes and products, there are a lot of benefits to be gained. Although they vary from sector to sector they can be quantified up to certain degree into measurable metrics. Some of these metrics include engagement, influence, loyalty, user generated content, time spent and virality. There are also gamification benefits that cannot be measured like the simple, yet unquantifiable concept of fun, which is probably the main reason for which a game is played. On the other side, researchers have characterised popular gamification strategies as sterile, artificial and simply not interesting enough. They have also stated that sometimes gamification can encourage unintended behaviours. The game designing

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community has also criticised gamification as not giving enough attention or outright, excluding elements like storytelling and experiences, focusing instead on simple reward systems. Some critics allege that gamification is a populist idea which does not benefit the ordinary user but rather the business that incorporates it into its content. In education, gamification is often correlated to digital game-based learning (DGBL). It is usually defined as the use of “game-based mechanics, aesthetics and game thinking to engage people, motivate action, promote learning and solve problems”.6 In this aspect, gamification is quite different than what it is thought of it in the marketing sector; this paper focuses on this gamification perception. Digital games have given a boost in the field of gamification. Scientists, who have grown in a popular culture of video games, game consoles and on-line multiplayer games used for entertainment, find it only logical and smart to use these aspects of everyday life for the purpose of education and professional training. In the New York Times article, "Why Science Majors Change Their Minds (It's Just So Darn Hard)",7 it is reported that about 60% of college students who have started with the intention of getting a Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics (STEM) degree in the United States, switch to a non-STEM major or quit. Although getting a degree can prove to be difficult, obtaining a degree in a STEM field is even more difficult. This result is alarming, as business leaders as well as government officials believe that the only way for the United States to remain economically competitive is to have more students, and in turn more professionals, with STEM

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degrees. Thus, if a difficult STEM curriculum is simplified through a gamification process, then the aim is accomplished. It is only a small step to move from entertainment to learning through games, especially in a highly digitized environment as the one that involves engineers and more specifically of young age. In the next paragraphs, an outline of current research on gamification is provided. Through statistics and empirical studies, the average gamer is described; benefits from gamification and criticism are discussed. A review of game mechanics, gamification in learning and examples of gamification in general and more specifically in education and engineering, with special focus in manufacturing technology, is presented. Finally, conclusions are drawn based on the available literature and the accumulated experience on this interesting topic.

2 Gamification, games and gamers

Before examining gamification, its building blocks – i.e. games themselves – must be studied. Everybody is familiar with games, mainly through experience. Games have essentially changed over the last 40 years with the huge technological advancements of information technology and the vast commercialization of computers. Characteristics that have to do with computer games are recognized almost everywhere. However, it is either argued that computer games play a big part in modern life or they are a habit

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which concerns mostly male children or teenagers. Statistical data may be used to exhibit the penetration of digital games in modern society and outline the average gamer.8-10 Not only children play games. This statement is supported by surveys indicating that almost 40% of all gamers in the United States are 36 years of age or older. The average gamer age is 37 years, with a 12 years gaming experience. Gamers older than 50 years old reach 29% in the United States in 2011, with an increase from only 9% in 1999. Not only males play games; the percentage of female gamers in the United States is 48%. In France from 1999 to 2013 the percentage of female gamers has risen from 10% to 49%. Games have a significant presence in homes as it is estimated that 77% of American households own videogames. Games are a significant feature of one of the most rapidly growing commercial industries, Mobile Technology. In 2015 nearly 2 billion people own a mobile device of some sort and 70 to 80% of all downloads on that device are games. About 215 million hours are spent per day in the United States for gaming; 5.93 million years have been spent in total, playing World of Warcraft, a famous on-line game. Regarding the games industry, revenue figures are compelling. In 2011, gamers in Germany spent 380 million Euros on virtual items and services and have downloaded 2.6 million games. The American games industry for 2013 alone was a 21.53 billion dollars market. Games are also present in the working environment; 46.6% of the German employees play games during working hours and 61% of CEOs and CFOs do

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the same. From the presented information it may be concluded games are an important part of contemporary life of people of various cultures, age, gender, economical background and other social features. Gamers are not only novice but there are also experienced game technology users and so it is a logical step to assume that games will eventually enter other parts of social life like work or education. Available surveys report that 68% of parents are of the opinion that playing games provides mental stimulation or education. One of the vehicles that will facilitate that entry is gamification. However, the subject of gamification needs to be scientifically approached. Hamari et al.11 searched well-known databases, namely Scopus, ScienceDirect, EBSCOHost, Web of Science, ACM Digital library, AISel, Google Scholar, and Proquest, for papers that include the terms gamification, gamif*, gameful and “motivational affordance” in the title, abstract, keywords and main body of the texts. Although their result does not include only peer-reviewed papers, more than 7,500 results were collected. From the analysis of the results, only 24 unique, peer-reviewed, empirical research papers were identified. Most of these papers were published in computer science conferences and only a few pertain to learning gamification. Seaborn and Fels2 conducted a similar literature survey in EBSCOHost, JSTOR, Ovid, ProQuest, PubMed, Scopus and Web of Knowledge databases. All subject areas were searched, as gamification is a multidisciplinary term, with “gamification OR gamif*” search query in books, journals,

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conference proceedings, reports, theses and dissertations. The search resulted in 769 works, reduced to 31 papers after the authors processed the data. Once again, conference papers were the larger ensemble of the texts categories. This can be justified by the fact that as a relatively new topic, works appear first in conferences rather than scientific journals. The graph of Fig. 1 shows that the papers from the aforementioned surveys are new and grow in number each year; note that although in the second survey there are 9 papers reported for 2013, the search of the authors covered only the 7 first months of that year.2 Nevertheless, there are strong indications that the interest in gamification is growing and more theory papers and empirical investigations are reported in scientific journals.12,13

Fig. 1 Literature survey on gamification

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Pages 9 – 18 are omitted from this version

feature of the system is that it can identify each student’s strengths and weaknesses and use supporting videos and instructions based on its assessments. This way there is a personalization of the learning process. Although aimed mainly to high school students, KnowRe can be important to the process of gamyfying technical education in two ways; firstly because it is applied on a purely technical discipline as mathematics and secondly because it offers a significant level of personalization, a very useful tool when dealing with individuals who come from different educational backgrounds.

5. Gamification for engineering application: manufacturing technology case studies

Although works on gamification and its theoretical foundations, academic worth, advantages and disadvantages exist, little empirical work is reported; especially surveys in manufacturing technology are rather limited. Thus the effectiveness of gamification from practice examples can be supported by only a few references. The former sections of this paper describe general gamification practices with remarks focusing on engineers. In the following paragraphs, targeted surveys and applications for engineers are presented with special emphasis in manufacturing. A category of gamification in engineering includes game systems in CAD-type environments. Brough et al.24 developed Virtual Training Studio where users train to

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perform assembly tasks. Li, Grossman and Fitzmaurice25 presented GamiCAD, a gamified tutorial for AutoCAD, based on missions, scores and rewards. Furthermore, the Monkey Wrench Conspiracy project is a first-person shooter game that aims to train engineers to move from 2D to 3D CAD systems. A review on such systems can be found in the work of Kosmadoudi et al.26 Another example is the PTC Manikin extension,27 which is a parametric 3D CAD/CAM/CAE software that provides ergonomic and human factors analysis capabilities in Pro/ENGINEER environment. This extension aims to aid engineers study and analyze interactions between people, products and work stations in a virtual environment. Working in industrial production is related to interaction with machines, or as depicted in Fig.2 with machine tools. The whole process of everyday activity is linked to their functionality and performance. More often than not, the trained professional has to achieve an optimal throughput, provide high quality products and reduce downtimes to minimal. In this highly competitive environment, the collaboration of the operators and maintenance personnel is of utmost significance. A vital element of games is the immediate feedback, visual and/or auditive. This feedback confirms the player’s action and presents to him the results of that action. It is not always possible to work with feedback in the context of industrial assembly due to the particularities of this specific environment. But when it is, it makes sense to use it in the best possible way. Some of the typical game features and mechanics can help in this

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direction. First, graphics, sounds and animations to the whole feedback process can be included. Thus the operator can have a clearer idea of the operations already performed, the operations that are scheduled and use this information accordingly. Furthermore, these features can aid visualize important coherences and processes of everyday work. A status bar or a tachometer can communicate immediately the status of the current activity in terms of daily goal. Furthermore, important information for an operator is that which describes malfunctions or mistakes. The operator must be quickly and accurately informed on which specific step caused the problem and where it is located in the whole process. It could be crucial to provide the operator with as much detail as possible and also a tentative approach for a solution. Using game inspired features like animated 3D models can help immensely visualize and locate the problem. Other issues are the optimization of idle time and motivation through reward.28

Fig. 2 PTC Creo Manikin Extension screenshot

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Additionally, a gamification approach was designed by the Laboratory of Machine Tools and Production Engineering and the Chair of Production Engineering of EMobility Components of RWTH Aachen University and tested in cooperation with a German car manufacturer, in order to enhance training strategy for workers in low volume assembly systems and increase ramp-up performance, with promising results.29 Gamification platforms also exist that are addressed to engineering problems and environments. In 2011, Siemens introduced Plantville as an online gaming platform.30 It was based on the hugely successful Facebook game Farmville and simulated the experience of being a plant manager. Players have the task of maintaining the operation of a plant, while in the same time trying to improve the productivity, efficiency and sustainability of the facility they are in charge of. The application is aimed at employees, customers and students. Its goal is to simulate a specific activity, educate players about the inner workings of a plant and teach about various aspects of science and technology. Of course it is a corporate product, so there is the parallel aim of raising the awareness of the industrial and infrastructure technologies and solutions from its mother company. Hauge and Riedel31 tested two serious games, namely COSIGA and Beware, in order to evaluate gamification for teaching engineering and manufacturing. Concurrent engineering Simulation Game (COSIGA) aims in supporting engineering education for the development of a new product with the Use of Concurrent Engineering; a product

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scenario is introduced and the player takes all the steps from specifications to production, taking into account several restrictions related to production. Beware, on the other hand, aims to teach the risks in enterprise networks and improve player’s skills in risk management. It was concluded that the evaluation of learning outcome is difficult to be measured and the learning effect can be assessed when the engineers put their learning into practice, in their working environment. Finally, Pourabdollahian et al. 32 employed Set Based Concurrent Engineering (SBCE) game, in order to bring a handson experience on lean product development. The game was tested in a real industrial environment of an Italian company. It was concluded that the participants showed a high level of engagement.

6. Conclusions

In this paper the novel technology of gamification was investigated with special interest in the education of engineers. In the first part some basic aspects and the terminology of gamification is presented. Although the research shows that gamification is used in many sectors, education is a unique case. Furthermore, statistics on games, gamers and gamification are presented in order to exhibit the introduction of digital games in everyday life of all people and elucidate how gamification can affect people. Game types and mechanics used in education as well as gamification of learning are discussed

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and comments on the application of these techniques in technical learning are made. The last part is dedicated to gamification in manufacturing and addresses engineering students and professionals. Examples of the exercise of this technique, game platforms and surveys are presented. In general, investigators conclude that gamification has a positive effect in engineering education by making difficult subjects more manageable, increase intrinsic motivation, scientific knowledge, collaboration, interest and reduce or better manage work load. However, there are also critical comments based on the lack of many empirical surveys. The studies that have been published so far are mainly theoretical and more experimental works, exploring experience of the participants need to be reported in the future. Although gamification is still in its first steps, it has grown a momentum that will yield many research results in the near future, especially in the field of engineering education at all levels.

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