Researchers

Ahmed Hosny Saleh Metwally

External Postdoctoral Researcher, Gamification in Education

Publications

Year 2021

Does Gamifying Homework Influence Performance and Perceived Gameful Experience?

@article{metwally2021does,
  title={Does Gamifying Homework Influence Performance and Perceived Gameful Experience?},
  author={Metwally, Ahmed Hosny Saleh and Chang, Maiga and Wang, Yining and Yousef, Ahmed Mohamed Fahmy},
  journal={Sustainability},
  volume={13},
  number={9},
  pages={4829},
  year={2021},
  publisher={Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute}
}

There is a growing body of literature that recognizes the importance of applying gamification in educational settings. This research developed an application to gamify students’ homework to address the concern of the students’ inability to complete their homework. This research aims to investigate students’ performance in doing their homework, and reflections and perceptions of the gameful experience in gamified homework exercises. Based on the data gathered from experimental and control groups (N = 84) via learning analytics, survey, and interview, the results show a high level of satisfaction according to students’ feedback. The most noticeable finding to extract from the analysis is that students can take on a persona, earn points, and experience a deeper sense of achievement through doing the gamified homework. Moreover, the students, on the whole, are likely to be intrinsically motivated whenever the homework is attributed to factors under their own control, when they consider that they have the expertise to be successful learners to achieve their desired objectives, and when they are interested in dealing with the homework for learning, not just achieving high grades.

Revealing the hotspots of educational gamification: An umbrella review

With gamification flourishing in popularity in educational research, it is essential to synthesize the expanding literature on educational gamification. The current umbrella review aims to comprehensively canvas the disparate findings and conflicting conclusions by critically examining educational gamification reviews. We included 46 reviews of state-of-the-art gamification published between 2016 and 2020. The critical analysis of these studies resulted in extracting six fundamental gamification research areas in education, namely: (1) concept and theoretical knowledge, (2) design, (3) development, (4) impact, (5) personalization, and (6) higher education. It also revealed that systematic reviews were the predominant analysis type. Our umbrella review illustrates the ongoing need in educational research for carefully structured examinations and rigorous methods that validate gamification's instructional advantages.

Year 2020

Gamifying Learning Assignments with Micro Design Approach

@inproceedings{metwally2020gamifying,
  title={Gamifying Learning Assignments with Micro Design Approach.},
  author={Metwally, Ahmed Hosny Saleh and Yousef, Ahmed Mohamed Fahmy and Wang, Yining},
  booktitle={CSEDU (1)},
  pages={710--717},
  year={2020}
}

There are convenient sets of design approaches that have been used to design different kinds of resources in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI). Many schools and educators are facing a formidable challenge that is how to make homework a valuable and interesting part of the learning process. This paper introduced a microdesign approach to support students in not only doing their homework, but also, learning from the assigned exercises that led to the extraction of the procedures for gamifying assignment with the approach, and a suggested conceptual design model called “Snowflake”. The “Snowflake” model is based on the idea of integrating raw resources and behaviours with the elements of gamification to form a micro gamified experience, which combines many items that lead to gamified assignments on the macro level. The most obvious finding to emerge from the design is that micro-level analysis has a positive impact on gamified assignment, which begins with the identification of raw objects such as quizzes, lessons, learning objects, and tools. Moreover, the linking of raw objects and gamification elements reflecting in a micro-gamified task, operation, exercise and assignment.

Learning Analytics and Perceived Experience of Gamifying Homework Assignments

@inproceedings{metwally2020learning,
  title={Learning Analytics and Perceived Experience of Gamifying Homework Assignments.},
  author={Metwally, Ahmed Hosny Saleh and Yousef, Ahmed Mohamed Fahmy and Wang, Yining},
  booktitle={CSEDU (1)},
  pages={673--683},
  year={2020}
}

The purpose of this research is to assist the primary school students to complete their homework assignments, and understanding students’ interpretation of gameplay experience and defining their satisfaction with gamification elements while playing online homework assignments. The implementation of the gamified homework followed the instructional design processes. The subsequent evaluation from a cohort of students comprised learning analytics besides surveying students’ experience. The results indicated that they were satisfied with completing the homework with the employed game design elements where they were active and focused. In addition, they showed a tendency to challenges that involved in the treatment. One of the more significant findings to emerge from this study is that the micro gamification design approach has promoted the perception of motivation and enjoyment to take into consideration the design principles of the approach.

Micro Design Approach for Gamifying Students’ Assignments

@inproceedings{metwally2020micro,
  title={Micro Design Approach for Gamifying Students’ Assignments},
  author={Metwally, Ahmed Hosny Saleh and Yousef, Ahmed Mohamed Fahmy and Yining, Wang},
  booktitle={2020 IEEE 20th International Conference on Advanced Learning Technologies (ICALT)},
  pages={349--351},
  year={2020},
  organization={IEEE}
}

Many students suffer from a lack of motivation and interest in doing their homework. This paper introduced a micro-design approach for implementing gamification of learning assignments, led to the extraction of the procedures for gamifying assignment with the micro-design approach, and a suggested conceptual design model called "Snowflake". The most interesting finding was that micro-level analysis has a positive impact on a gamified assignment which begins with the identification of raw objects such as quizzes, lessons, learning objects and resources.

Year 2019

Investigating the effects of gamifying homework on students' perceived satisfaction, behavioral intention and intrinsic motivation

@inproceedings{metwally2019investigating,
  title={Investigating the effects of gamifying homework on students' perceived satisfaction, behavioral intention and intrinsic motivation.},
  author={Metwally, Ahmed Hosny Saleh and Yousef, Ahmed Mohamed Fahmy and Wang, Yining},
  booktitle={GamiFIN},
  pages={47--57},
  year={2019}
}

Gamification initiatives in learning contexts acknowledge that massive numbers of students play video games. Gamification in education, therefore, is based on introducing models to enhance psychological aspects within learning processes. These models come from the internal motivations, such as the human natural predisposition to learn, the desire for improvement, the desire to overcome obstacles and win, or the fun aspect that students find it in social relationships. The objectives of this study are examining the following research questions: a) What are the students’ levels of satisfaction after using a gamified homework app (Pomawin)? b) what are students’ attitudes and their behavioral intention towards gamifying homework? and c) how does implementing Pomawin for homework correction plan effect students’ intrinsic motivation? The data has been collected and statistically analyzed from 53 primary school children at fifth grade (23 boys, 30 girls) after they achieved their homework by using Pomawin. The results of this study indicate that gamification can be used as an educational tool to improve student’s satisfaction, behavioral intention and intrinsic motivation.

Year 2017

Gamification in Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) to Support Chinese Language Learning

@inproceedings{metwally2017gamification,
  title={Gamification in Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) to Support Chinese Language Learning},
  author={Metwally, Ahmed Hosny Saleh and Yining, Wang},
  booktitle={2017 International Conference of Educational Innovation through Technology (EITT)},
  pages={293--298},
  year={2017},
  organization={IEEE}
}

In recent years, Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) have a widespread and became one of the future trends to help people from different places to learn online and study courses in different majors. One of the most interesting subjects on MOOCs platforms is Language Learning. The lack of motivation to complete the course after enroling, and completion rates still real problems need to find an innovative solution. Gamification can increase learner motivation to continue studying through MOOCs and can reduce drop-out rates. This research aims at providing a theoretical and practical framework for connecting Gamification in Massive Open Online Chinese Courses and applying Gamification mechanics to support Chinese Language learning through focusing on different perspectives for applying: gamification and instructional design, gamification and course elements, gamifying course interface.

Proposed Model for Using Open Educational Resources in Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs)

@inproceedings{metwally2017proposed,
  title={Proposed Model for Using Open Educational Resources in Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs)},
  author={Metwally, AHS and Yining, W},
  booktitle={Proceedings of the Ninth International Conference on Mobile, Hybrid, and On-line Learning, Nice, France},
  pages={19--23},
  year={2017}
}

One of the most important events of the last few years was the propagation of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs). Indeed, MOOCs have managed to help huge numbers of online users, especially in higher education sector, to attend free courses and get certificates. Open Educational Resources (OERs) can be used in different ways in the learning practices because the concept of openness and reusability of these resources encourages many stakeholders to use these resources in online and massive courses. The main challenge faced by many experiments in using OERs in MOOCs is how to enhance interaction between students and educational content. Thus, there is an urgent need to address this challenge by building and maintaining links between these kinds of courses and the provided OERs by other universities. The specific objective of this paper was to propose a model for using OERs through the current MOOCs. Data for this study were collected by reviewing previous related work and models to present this model in three main Phases: Pre-using OERs, Using OERs, and sustaining of OERs. Every Phase includes attributes and components. This proposed model can be implemented when designers and developers of MOOCs intend to invest different open educational resources in engaging participants and exchange best learning practices.