doi: 10.7763/IJIET.2013.V3.237
Engaging Computer Science Students through Gamification in an Online Social Network Based Collaborative Learning Environment
Cen Li
,
Zhijiang Dong ,
Roland H. Untch ,
Michael Chasteen
Abstract
Gamification is the use of game mechanics such as rewarding points and achievement badges to engage target audience and encourage desired behaviors. Gamification has gained a great surge of interest in recent years as an effective approach to engage existing users and attract new users to web sites. In this paper, the use of gamification in engaging Computer Science students in an online social network based collaborative learning environment, called PeerSpace, is discussed. PeerSpace integrates a suite of Web 2.0 tools that promote student interactions on course-related topics as well as purely social matters. The design and implementation details of various gamification schemes are presented. An assessment of the effectiveness of the schemes is discussed.
Keywords
- Gamification
- computer science education
- computer supported collaborative learning
- games
- CS1 and CS2
How to Cite
Cen Li, Zhijiang Dong, Roland H. Untch, and Michael Chasteen, "Engaging Computer Science Students through Gamification in an Online Social Network Based Collaborative Learning Environment," International Journal of Information and Education Technology, vol. 3, no. 1, pp. 72-77, 2013. https://doi.org/10.7763/IJIET.2013.V3.237
Copyright & License
Copyright © 2013 by the authors. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited (CC BY 4.0).