Researchers

Paula Palomino

PhD Student, Gamification in Education

Publications

Year 2020

How to Gamify Learning Systems? An Experience Report using the Design Sprint Method and a Taxonomy for Gamification Elements in Education

@article{toda2019gamify,
  title={How to Gamify Learning Systems? An Experience Report using the Design Sprint Method and a Taxonomy for Gamification Elements in Education},
  author={Toda, Armando M and Palomino, Paula T and Oliveira, Wilk and Rodrigues, Luiz and Klock, Ana CT and Gasparini, Isabela and Cristea, Alexandra I and Isotani, Seiji},
  journal={Journal of Educational Technology \& Society},
  volume={22},
  number={3},
  pages={47--60},
  year={2019},
  publisher={JSTOR}
}

One of the main goals of gamification in educational settings is to increase student motivation and engagement. To facilitate the design of gamified educational systems, in recent years, studies have proposed various approaches (e.g., methodologies, frameworks and models). One of the main problems, however, is that most of these approaches are theoretical, and do not provide a proof-of-concept. This paper advances the state of the art by providing a practical way to help implement this kind of system. In this study, we present, for the first time, how one can apply gamification elements in a learning system using the Design Sprint method, to guide designers and developers on replicating this process. Additionally, as starting point, we use a taxonomy composed of 21 game elements, proposed to be used within learning environments, organised into five game element categories, according to their goal/usage. Our main contribution is to present how to systematically implement the gamification elements focused on educational ends, which is of special value to practitioners, designers and developers.

Validating the effectiveness of data-driven gamification recommendations: An Exploratory study

@article{toda2020validating,
  title={Validating the effectiveness of data-driven gamification recommendations: An Exploratory study},
  author={Toda, Armando and Palomino, Paula and Rodrigues, Luiz and Oliveira, Wilk and Shi, Lei and Isotani, Seiji and Cristea, Alexandra},
  journal={arXiv preprint arXiv:2008.05847},
  year={2020}
}

Gamification design has benefited from data-driven approaches to creating strategies based on students characteristics. However, these strategies need further validation to verify their effectiveness in e-learning environments. The exploratory study presented in this paper thus aims at verifying how data-driven gamified strategies are perceived by the students, ie, the users of e-learning environments. In this study, we conducted a survey presenting 25 predefined strategies, based on a previous study, to students and analysed each strategys perceived relevance, instanced in an e-learning environment. Our results show that students perceive Acknowledgement, Objective and Progression as important elements in a gamified e-learning environment. We also provide new insights about existing elements and design recommendations for domain specialists.

Which one is the best? A quasi-experimental study comparing frameworks for unplugged gamification

@article{oliveira2020one,
  title={Which one is the best? A quasi-experimental study comparing frameworks for unplugged gamification},
  author={Oliveira, Wilk and Toda, Armando M and Palomino, Paula T and Rodrigues, Luiz and Isotani, Seiji},
  journal={RENOTE},
  volume={18},
  number={1},
  year={2020}
}

Despite many studies proposing and evaluating frameworks to design gamified environments in education, there is still difficulty in making end-users (e.g., teachers, instructors, and designers) use these services and assess which ones are most appropriate for their context. We tackled this challenge by comparing two frameworks to design a gamified non-virtual class, through a quasiexperimental study. Our main results indicate that one of the frameworks (Six Steps to Gamification - 6D) proved to be more adaptable to the context and the other (GAMIFY-SN) was more complete to associate the gamification elements within the instructor’s final objectives in the gamified class. Thus, our results promote a contribution to end-users through insights on which the most suitable framework to use in each situation.

Year 2019

A Taxonomy of Game Elements for Gamification in Educational Contexts: Proposal and Evaluation

@inproceedings{toda2019taxonomy,
  title={A taxonomy of game elements for gamification in educational contexts: Proposal and evaluation},
  author={Toda, Armando and Oliveira, Wilk and Klock, Ana and Palomino, Paula and Pimenta, Marcelo and Bittencourt, Ig and Shi, Lei and Gasparini, Isabela and Isotani, Seiji and Cristea, Alexandra},
  booktitle={2019 IEEE 19th International Conference on Advanced Learning Technologies (ICALT)},
  volume={2161},
  pages={84--88},
  year={2019},
  organization={IEEE}
}

Gamification has been widely employed in the educational domain over the past eight years when the term became a trend. However, the literature states that gamification still lacks formal definitions to support the design of gamified strategies. This paper aims to create a taxonomy for the game elements, based on gamification experts’ opinions. After a brief review from existing work, we extract first the game elements from the current state of the art, and then evaluate them via a survey with 19 gamification and education experts. The resulting taxonomy taxonomy included the description of 21 game elements and their quantitative and qualitative evaluation by the experts. Overall, the proposed taxonomy was in general well accepted by most of the experts. They also suggested expanding it with the inclusion of Narrative and Storytelling game elements. Thus, the main contribution of this paper is proposing a new, confirmed taxonomy to standardise the terminology used to define the game elements as a mean to design and deploy gamification strategies in the educational domain.

Analysing gamification elements in educational environments using an existing Gamification taxonomy

@article{toda2019analysing,
  title={Analysing gamification elements in educational environments using an existing Gamification taxonomy},
  author={Toda, Armando M and Klock, Ana CT and Oliveira, Wilk and Palomino, Paula T and Rodrigues, Luiz and Shi, Lei and Bittencourt, Ig and Gasparini, Isabela and Isotani, Seiji and Cristea, Alexandra I},
  journal={Smart Learning Environments},
  volume={6},
  number={1},
  pages={16},
  year={2019},
  publisher={Springer}
}

Gamification has been widely employed in the educational domain over the past eight years when the term became a trend. However, the literature states that gamification still lacks formal definitions to support the design and analysis of gamified strategies. This paper analysed the game elements employed in gamified learning environments through a previously proposed and evaluated taxonomy while detailing and expanding this taxonomy. In the current paper, we describe our taxonomy in-depth as well as expand it. Our new structured results demonstrate an extension of the proposed taxonomy which results from this process, is divided into five dimensions, related to the learner and the learning environment. Our main contribution is the detailed taxonomy that can be used to design and evaluate gamification design in learning environments.

Automatic game experience identification in educational games

@inproceedings{oliveira2019automatic,
  title={Automatic game experience identification in educational games},
  author={Oliveira, Wilk and Rodrigues, Luiz and Toda, Armando and Palomino, Paula and Isotani, Seiji},
  booktitle={Brazilian Symposium on Computers in Education (Simp{\'o}sio Brasileiro de Inform{\'a}tica na Educa{\c{c}}{\~a}o-SBIE)},
  volume={30},
  number={1},
  pages={952},
  year={2019}
}

One of the main challenges in the field of educational games is the automatic and implicit users' game experience identification. To face this challenge, we present an exploratory study by using a data-driven based approach for collecting and identifying this experience. We used two different data-mining techniques aiming to associate the user's data logs from an educational game with their game-like experience. Our main results indicate that it is possible to extract the automatic and implicit acquisition of the student's game experience in educational games and demonstrate how user's data logs drive their experiences. We also provided different associations between user data logs in educational games and the student's game experience.

Exploring content game elements to support gamification design in educational systems: narrative and storytelling

@inproceedings{palomino2019exploring,
  title={Exploring content game elements to support gamification design in educational systems: narrative and storytelling},
  author={Palomino, Paula and Toda, Armando and Oliveira, Wilk and Rodrigues, Luiz and Cristea, Alexandra and Isotani, Seiji},
  booktitle={Brazilian Symposium on Computers in Education (Simp{\'o}sio Brasileiro de Inform{\'a}tica na Educa{\c{c}}{\~a}o-SBIE)},
  volume={30},
  number={1},
  pages={773},
  year={2019}
}

There are currently several studies on gamification applied to learning systems, aiming to encourage students to do certain tasks and improving their learning. According to several researches, most frameworks for gamification already developed are structural (eg scoring systems, ranking, etc.), with very few content-related frameworks. Importantly, to the best of our knowledge, there is no known narrative framework available. Therefore this paper analyses data obtained from a survey about the students' preferred game elements in an educational context, using Association Rule Mining and focusing on the rules found concerning Narrative and Storytelling elements. Our study showed that Narrative and Storytelling are tightly related. We thus provide insights of their use in groups of other game elements, enabling the creation of gamified instructional design strategies based on these aspects.

Gamification journey: A Novel approach for classifying gamer types for gamified educational systems

@article{palominogamification,
  title={Gamification Journey: A Novel Approach for Classifying Gamer Types for Gamified Educational Systems},
  author={Palomino, Paula T and Toda, Armando M and Oliveira, Wilk and Rodrigues, Luiz and Isotani, Seiji}
}

Gamification applied to education studies are often related to the student’s motivation and performance in specific tasks. However, what stimulates one student does not always have the same result with another one. Thus, some methods were developed to group and identify gamification users preferences, called “gamer types”. By identifying the “gamer type” of a user, it is possible to tailor a gamified educational system (GES) to achieve better results. This approach, however, has some limitations, such as the fact that these classifications are based on the behavioral profiles of gamers and that, in order to identify the profile, the process is relatively complex and time-consuming. This paper proposes a new approach in the identification of student’ profiles for use in a GES, using Jung’s 12 universal archetypes, concepts of the Peirce’s Triadic Semiosis, and the Campbell’s Hero’s Journey. We address these concepts and how it was related in the design process of avatar creation interfaces for a GES focused on the game elements of narrative and storytelling.

Narrative for Gamification in Education: Why Should you Care?

@inproceedings{palomino2019narrative,
  title={Narrative for gamification in education: why should you care?},
  author={Palomino, Paula Toledo and Toda, Armando M and Oliveira, Wilk and Cristea, Alexandra I and Isotani, Seiji},
  booktitle={2019 IEEE 19th International Conference on Advanced Learning Technologies (ICALT)},
  volume={2161},
  pages={97--99},
  year={2019},
  organization={IEEE}
}

Gamification applied to education studies are focusing to encourage students to perform specific tasks, however many of these studies are still inconclusive about how much gamification can influence engagement. Also, the frameworks used to apply gamification in those systems are mainly structural (e.g. scoring and ranking systems) rather than content frameworks (where the game elements are applied to the content). Therefore, this paper aims at creating a narrative definition exclusively for gamification purposes. First, we developed an empirical research starting with a literature review of the narrative concept in other medias, such as games. Then, we mapped these definitions into features and crossed the similarities and differences across them, to find a common ground that could be applied in gamification contexts. Our results show that the narrative element definition to use in gamification contexts best drifts from the games ones, however its definition is unique to the point it could be isolated and used in future frameworks. We also found that the characteristics of this concept resembles some of User Experience.

Teaching Interactive Fiction for Undergraduate Students with the Aid of Information Technologies: An Experience Report

@article{palomino2019teaching,
  title={Teaching Interactive Fiction for Undergraduate Students with the Aid of Information Technologies: An Experience Report},
  author={Palomino, Paula T and Toda, Armando M and Oliveira, Wilk and Rodrigues, Luiz and Isotani, Seiji},
  journal={RENOTE-Revista Novas Tecnologias na Educa{\c{c}}{\~a}o},
  volume={17},
  number={3},
  year={2019}
}

This paper presents an experience report concerning the use of a platform called “Storium” in the subject of “Interactive Fiction” for undergraduate students, from a Digital Design Course. The objective was to use the learning theories of constructivism and multimedia learning to create an instructional plan devised to teach the students how to create complex interactive narratives and stories from a practical perspective. During the course, the students learned the subject’s theoretical concepts and applied them directly, creating their own interactive fiction. The results from this research proposes a new approach, using digital tools whose resources provides an environment for the creation of interactive narratives. These narratives can be used to aid future designs of instructional plans for complex writing concepts.

Thinking Inside the Box: How to Tailor Gamified Educational Systems Based on Learning Activities Types

@inproceedings{rodrigues2019thinking,
  title={Thinking Inside the Box: How to Tailor Gamified Educational Systems Based on Learning Activities Types},
  author={Rodrigues, Luiz and Oliveira, Wilk and Toda, Armando and Palomino, Paula and Isotani, Seiji},
  booktitle={Brazilian Symposium on Computers in Education (Simp{\'o}sio Brasileiro de Inform{\'a}tica na Educa{\c{c}}{\~a}o-SBIE)},
  volume={30},
  number={1},
  pages={823},
  year={2019}
}

Selecting gamification elements suitable for specific players (personalization) has been sought to improve the impacts of Gamified Educational Systems (GES). However, the lack of context might be a factor on the inconsistent results of those approaches. To address this lack, we introduce a method for personalizing GES based on learning activities types. The assumption is that selecting gamification elements for specific types of learning activities has the potential to improve GES impact on users by considering the context of each activity and, thus, contributing to their learning process. We describe how to apply our approach, how it differs from user-based methods, as well as discuss three cases of application and challenges yet to be tackled.

Towards Automatic Flow Experience Identification in Educational Systems: A Theory-driven Approach

@inproceedings{10.1145/3341215.3356311,
author = {Oliveira, Wilk and Toda, Armando and Palomino, Paula and Rodrigues, Luiz and Isotani, Seiji and Shi, Lei},
title = {Towards Automatic Flow Experience Identification in Educational Systems: A Theory-Driven Approach},
year = {2019},
isbn = {9781450368711},
publisher = {Association for Computing Machinery},
address = {New York, NY, USA},
url = {https://doi.org/10.1145/3341215.3356311},
doi = {10.1145/3341215.3356311},
abstract = {Flow is a state of deep engagement that is highly related to the learning experiences. One of the biggest challenges in this field is to provide automatic and implicit students' flow experience identification in educational systems, contributing to the educational systems design and evaluation improvement. In this paper, we propose a theory-driven based conceptual model, associating student's interaction data logs with each of the flow experience dimensions, towards the automatic flow identification. The main result indicates that eight different kinds of data logs can be associated with the nine original flow experience dimensions and provide the automatic students' flow experience identification. As a future study, we aim to design an educational system capable of obtaining student's data logs conducting a data-driven based study to validate our theoretical study.},
booktitle = {Extended Abstracts of the Annual Symposium on Computer-Human Interaction in Play Companion Extended Abstracts},
pages = {581–588},
numpages = {8},
keywords = {flow experience, user interaction, automatic identification, educational systems., flow theory},
location = {Barcelona, Spain},
series = {CHI PLAY '19 Extended Abstracts}
}

Flow is a state of deep engagement that is highly related to the learning experiences. One of the biggest challenges in this field is to provide automatic and implicit students' flow experience identification in educational systems, contributing to the educational systems design and evaluation improvement. In this paper, we propose a theory-driven based conceptual model, associating student's interaction data logs with each of the flow experience dimensions, towards the automatic flow identification. The main result indicates that eight different kinds of data logs can be associated with the nine original flow experience dimensions and provide the automatic students' flow experience identification. As a future study, we aim to design an educational system capable of obtaining student's data logs conducting a data-driven based study to validate our theoretical study.