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.
Index Terms—Gamification, computer science education, computer supported collaborative learning, games, CS1 and CS2.
Cen Li, Zhijiang Dong, and Roland H. Untch are with the Department of
Computer Science, Middle Tennessee State University, Murfreesboro, TN
37132 USA (e-mail: Cen.Li@mtsu.edu, Zhijiang.Dong@mtsu.edu,
Roland.Untch@mtsu.edu).
Michael Chasteen was a graduate student in Middle Tennessee State
University. He is now with Google Inc., Irvine, CA 92612 USA (e-mail:
mchasteen1@gmail.com).
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.