An Agile Holistic Gamified Pedagogical Design Framework To Promote The Synergy Between Teachers And Game Developers

The young generation is passionate about technology and the update of learning/teaching tools is a necessity to match their current interest. The existing literature on gamification supports its benefit on students’ engagement, learning acquisition, skills and resilience. This research discusses gamification concept in a pedagogical context, in which there appears to be a lack of clarity about the meaning provided in the literature. The balance of gamification design to cultivate students’ both extrinsic and intrinsic motivation. Then, it describes a focused interest in teachers’ roles as key stakeholders in gamification design. A literature review carried out to investigate current practices of gamification design and identify the barriers. There is inadequate integration of learning that theories might preserve the pedagogical aspect of the design. However, these theories might not be reciprocated by game developers. Conversely, game design terminology could be challenging for some teachers. There is a need to find common ground where both parties can express their design decisions and communicate efficiently. Therefore, there is a need for a communication platform that includes the two stakeholders—teachers and game developers—in the design process. This would keep each of them focused on their area of expertise and avoid the disadvantage of taking up too much of their time (i.e. the teachers will not dive into programming or game design technicalities). The research developed an Agile Holistic Gamified Pedagogical Design (AH-GPD) Framework to support the synergy between teachers and game developers in the design process. The framework’s high-level is based on two software design models: Analysis, Design, Development, Implementation, and Evaluation (ADDIE) and Usability-Software Development Life Cycle (U-SDLC). In this research, a comprehensive search was conducted to identify the gamification elements in a pedagogical context. The identified gamification elements are used to enhance the practicality of the framework and its adaptability by teachers. Then, the teachers’ role was defined using in the design process using a quantitative approach to categorise the gamification aspects from a teacher’s point of view. The supported categorisations are teacher-driven, game developers-driven or shared task. The next step of the research is the practical validation of the gamification elements utilising the think aloud interview protocol (qualitative approach) with teachers. Following that, a validation of the research with game developers through interviews to enable the collaboration with teachers and refining the framework. The validation of the research with both teachers and game developers concludes to building Pedagogical Game Design Document (Ped-GDD) as communication template. An evaluation of the Ped-GDD was conducted with a panel of experts representing the two stakeholders; teachers and game developers. The evaluation was conducted through a semi-structured interview, and the criteria is adopted from the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM). The features assessed are; Easy to learn, Easy to use, Usefulness, Comprehensiveness, Adaptability and Intention to use in the future.