Gamification in Academia Practice – What Motivate Users Most

Abstract

Gamification is the use of game design elements and game mechanisms in non-game context to increase audience’s motivation and engagement. Not only being applied on the commercial market to attract consumers, gamification is also used in educational context by teachers to help keeping students engaged and motivated in the physical classrooms. This paper furthermore upraises the discussion of how the gamification strategies can be implemented online for a website with academic purposes to retain its members, and what of which are the members’ most concerns a designer should adapt to if time and resource are limited. Examples are given and an online survey of 73 subjects with empirical experience was conduct to reveal that among those game mechanisms proposed, the graphical feedbacks are the subjects’ most concerns, followed by the gamified theme activity and discussion board. For websites which are not gameplay purposed this paper could provide useful suggestions for the designers who try to use gamification for enhancing the audience’s participation and enthusiasm, even for educational purposes.