Learning Services joined up with two other departments from within the Academic Services directorate, Student Support and Infozone. To bring the stands together as one, it was decided that the stand should be interactive. One of the areas that Learning Services has been exploring is 'Gamification' and the use of game mechanics to better engage with students around study skills/digital literacy workshops.
The technologies team (Elevate) with Learning Services has been developing a number of ways to build a Gamification framework, included in this framework is the development of Open and Digital Badges.
The stand, pictured below, hosted a number of posters displaying the current projects including an Augmented Reality heritage lottery funded project at Holywells Park. Learning Services have introduced a number of technologies to improve the visitor experience.
To tie the different departments together a number of quiz questions were produced that were easily answerable from the information contained in the posters. A selection of questions from each department created three quizzes. The quizzes were loaded in iPads that made up part of the stand, visitors were asked to answer the quizzes, and a successfully completed quiz, would entitle that participant to an Open Badge.
The quiz statistics were shown live on the screen in the stand. The Gamification and Open Badge development to date has led Learning Services to believe that badges should not be issued purely for attendance. A requirement for some form of reflection or activity which then triggers the badge has a much better response.
The photograph below shows a number of attendees participating in a quiz:
The live statistics that were shown from the quizzes included number of attempts, average time taken and which questions were answered correctly/incorrectly. A sample of these stats are shown below:
Please get in touch with Learning Services if you would like to discuss the use of Gamification in your course at UCS.
