Introduction
- improving the existing taxonomy, by providing details on the selection, description, and use of these elements to evaluate and analyse existing systems;
- proposing recommendations on how to hierarchically organise these elements semantically, to be used by designers, teachers, and other education stakeholders.
Related works
Taxonomy | Field | Focus | Number of elements | Present Instances | Validation |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Werbach and Hunter (2013) | General | Design | 30 | No | No |
Marczewski (2015) | General | Design | 52 | No | No |
Klock et al. (2016) | Education | Design | 14 | Yes | No |
Toda et al. (2018a) | Education | Design | 19 | Yes | No |
Actual Taxonomy | Education | Design, analysis and evaluation | 21 | Yes | Yes |
Methods and tools
- Comprehensibility: the standardised concept for the group of game elements, the “name”.
- Description: the concept definition.
- Relevance: the relevance of that element in the overall taxonomy.
- Examples: the examples tied to the definition and concept.
- Coverage: the representation of the overall taxonomy. If this set of 21 elements represent and cover well the game elements needed for educational applications.
Results
Description of the five dimensions
Performance / measurement
- Acknowledgement: also known as badges, medals, trophies and achievements. It is a kind of extrinsic feedback that praises the players’ specific set of actions, e.g. completing a certain number of problems may lead them to earn a “Solver” badge; finishing a task in a predefined time limit may earn them a “Flash” trophy; making a certain number of interactions with other students may give them a “Socialiser” achievement; making a certain number of contributions may earn them a “Contributor” badge. Acknowledgement is one of the most used elements in gamified applications (Klock et al. 2018a; Koivisto and Hamari 2019; Toda et al. 2018b).
- Level: also known as skill level, character level etc. This is related to an extrinsic hierarchical layer that provides the user new advantages as they advance in the environment, e.g. the students gain a level every time they complete a certain number of tasks, when they advance their level, they have access to more challenging tasks.
- Progression: also known as progress bars, steps, maps. Provides an extrinsic guidance to the users of their advance in the environment, allowing these users to locate themselves.
- Point: also known as scores, experience points, skill points, etc. It is a simple way to provide extrinsic feedback to the users’ actions. Point is the most basic concept found in almost all gamified applications (Dichev and Dicheva 2017).
- Stats: also known as information, Head Up Display (HUD) and data. It is related to the visual information provided by the environment to the learner (extrinsic), e.g. how many tasks they completed or overall stats on the environment. In virtual environments this can also be dashboards.
Ecological
- Chance: also known as randomness, luck, fortune or probability. This intrinsic concept is related to the random property of a certain event or outcome, e.g. the student may get a random number of points after completing a task; spinning a roulette that may give the user a bonus; user has a probability of getting a special item based on its luck (Dignan 2011).
- Imposed choice: also known as choice, judgment, and paths. This extrinsic concept occurs when the player faces an explicit decision that they must make to advance in the environment. An example of this concept is to present the user two different contents and make them choose one or another, blocking their advance if a choice is not to pick.
- Economy: also known as transactions, market, exchange. This concept is extrinsically related to any transaction that may occur in the environment. Examples are trading points for advantages within the environment and related to the content.
- Rarity: also known as limited items, collection, exclusivity. It is related to extrinsically limited resources within the environment which can stimulate the learners through a specific goal.
- Time Pressure: also represented as countdown timers or clocks. It is related to time itself used to pressure the learners’ actions (extrinsic). In learning environments, this can be represented also as deadlines. It is, alongside Social Pressure, considered one of the most irrelevant elements since it can potentially disengage the learner (Toda et al. 2019b).
Social
- Competition: also known as conflict, leader boards, scoreboards, player vs player, etc. It’s an intrinsic concept, tied to a challenge where the user faces another user to achieve a common goal, e.g. using scoreboards based on the number of points, badges, levels, etc.
- Cooperation: also known as teamwork, co-op, groups, etc. It is also an intrinsic concept (related to a task) where the users must collaborate to achieve a common goal, can be considered the opposite of competition (however, both concepts can be used together). Examples of cooperation are tasks where groups interact with each other and are recognised by these interactions (Shi et al. 2014).
- Reputation: also known as classification, status. It is related to titles that the learner may gain and accumulate within the environment (intrinsic). Differing from levels, titles represent more of a social status which does not necessarily reflect on the learners’ skills. These titles are usually used within communities to create a hierarchy in the environment.
- Social Pressure: Also known as peer pressure or guild missions. This intrinsic concept is related to social interactions that exert pressure on the learner.
Personal
- Novelty: also known as an update, surprise, changes, etc. It is intrinsically related to the updates that occur within the environment, by adding new information, content or even new game elements. It is a good strategy to keep users within the environment to avoid stagnation since longitudinal studies on gamification have shown that a static approach (without updates) may cause disengagement and demotivation (Hanus and Fox 2014).
- Objectives: also known as missions, side-quests, milestones, etc. This intrinsic concept is related to goals, it provides the player an end, or a purpose to perform the required tasks. Examples on the use of Objective can be broadened (as getting approved in the course) or more specific (as obtaining a certain score in a task) (Toda et al. 2018a).
- Puzzle: also known as challenges, cognitive tasks, actual puzzles, etc. This intrinsic concept is related to the activities that are implemented within the environment, they can be tied or considered as the learning activities since the focus is to provide a cognitive challenge to the learner. This concept is also implicitly present in all educational environments, through quizzes or challenges.
- Renovation: also known as boosts, extra life, renewal, etc. This concept is intrinsically related to the property of re-doing a task, event or any of the sorts. It allows the learner a second chance after they fail a task. It is one of the properties that makes games fun (Lee and Hammer 2011).
- Sensation: This is either visual or sound stimulation, etc. It is related to the use of learners’ senses to improve the experience (intrinsic). This can be done through dynamic and gameful interfaces, Virtual Reality (VR) and/or Augmented Reality (AR).
Fictional
- Narrative: also known as karma system, implicit decisions, etc. This intrinsic concept is the order of events as they happen in the game, through the user experience. This experience is influenced by implicit choices made by the user. Examples of this are giving a small token of appreciation to the students that opt to interact with other students, subtly and discreetly (Palomino et al. 2019).
- Storytelling: can be seen as audio queues, text stories, etc. It is the way the story of the environment is told (as a script). It is told through text, voice, or sensorial resources. It is highly used as a tool to support the narrative within an environment (Palomino et al. 2019).