Exploring the synergies between gamification and data collection in higher education

Abstract

In recent years, gamification techniques have been gaining popularity in all kind of educational scenarios, helping students improve their learning process by fostering engagement and attention. Implementing gamification aspects in a course can also provide an opportunity to gather student data that would not have been available otherwise. This paper describes a data gathering process in the context of a university course, as a work-in-progress. Among these data there is information regarding the participation of students in quizzes presented as games in the classroom. These quizzes combined questions covering course con-tents, as well as some regarding self-regulated learning habits. The main advantage observed was a high student participation in the quizzes. As a result, this gamification approach proved to be a more effective way to gather student data compared to other methods applied in previous academic years, which often failed due to many students ignoring optional activities.