Manuscript received April 14, 2023; revised May 31, 2023; accepted July 3, 2023.
Abstract—Gamification in education applied to digital
learning environments is undergoing an intense development in
recent years at all educational levels, including higher education.
The success of this type of didactic actions is linked to a good
match between the player profile designed by the professor and
the student’s own player profile. In this paper a descriptive
analysis is made of the player profiles with which higher
education professors of science areas identify themselves and
which ones they consider to be more conducive to learning in
this specific field of knowledge. For this purpose, Bartle’s
traditional classification of player profiles (Killer, Explorer,
Socializer, and Achiever) has been used, and a questionnaire has
been sent to a sample of university professors from scientific
areas. The responses to this questionnaire have been statistically
analyzed. The results reveal that the most common player
profile among the participating science professors is Explorer,
which is also considered to be the most suitable for learning.
This majority choice of the Explorer profile is higher, in
proportion, among science professors with previous experience
in gamification. In addition, male science professors identify
more than females with the most competitive player profiles
(Killer and Achiever). Finally, some implications and
recommendations derived from the results are described.
Index Terms—Digital learning environment, gamified
learning, player types, science education
The authors are with Instruction and Design in Engineering and
Education Research Group (TiDEE.rg), Catholic University of Ávila, Ávila,
Spain.
*Correspondence: diego.vergara@ucavila.es (D.V.)
Cite: Diego Vergara*, Álvaro Antón-Sancho, and Pablo Fernández-Arias, "Player Profiles in Science Education for Game-Based Digital Training Actions at the University Level," International Journal of Information and Education Technology vol. 13, no. 11, pp. 1663-1671, 2023.
Copyright © 2023 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).