This thesis describes connections between gamification theory, motivation theory, and economic performance, while also covering how managers can motivate employees. Having motivated employees has a lot of benefits, for example positive effects on the companies' financial results. Employee motivation can have an impact on economic performance in an organisation through productivity, effectiveness, and profitability. Gamification, that is the use of game design elements in non-game contexts, is used by different organisations and in different contexts. The purpose of the study is to create a better understanding of the impact gamification can have on the motivation of employees in Swedish retail stores and what effects it in turn has on the companies' financial results. The focus will be on how store managers experience it. The thesis is intended to contribute with increased information and knowledge about what gamification is, how gamification can be used and what effects gamification can have on employee motivation and for companies' financial results. The theoretical framework and the empirical findings show that gamification has a positive impact on the motivation of retail employees. The increase in motivation may have a positive affect on employee effectiveness and productivity. Furthermore, increased employee effectiveness may increase the profitability of an organisation.

Automatic assessment tools are increasingly utilized in undergraduate programming courses to evaluate software solutions, streamlining the grading process for both students and professors. In spite of their benefits of speed and convenience, such online systems for providing instant feedback have the tendency to draw attention to performance-based outcomes while failing to reliably recognize the effort and hard work a student puts into a solution. For the many struggling students who are new to programming, this type of objective feedback can be discouraging and may decrease their motivation to stay engaged towards success. To address this issue, this paper explores strategies for more effectively recognizing student progress on programming assignments and identifying small tasks for students to complete that will steer them in the right direction. Further, this paper will discuss a gamification approach for adding ``Daily Missions" to Web-CAT, the Web-based Center for Automated Testing. From an evaluation of results gathered from student experiences with this latest version of Web-CAT at Virginia Tech, this paper will highlight the valuable potential gamification has in boosting student engagement in computer science learning. / Master of Science / In college computer science courses today, many students submit their assignments and receive instant feedback through online websites. Although they streamline the grading process for both students and professors, these systems have the tendency to draw attention to performance-based outcomes while failing to reliably recognize the effort and hard work a student puts into a solution. For the many struggling students who are new to programming, this type of objective feedback can be discouraging and may decrease their motivation to stay engaged towards success. To address this issue, this paper explores strategies for more effectively recognizing student progress on programming assignments and identifying small tasks for students to complete that will steer them in the right direction. One strategy in particular is called gamification, which refers to giving game-like attributes to a non-game system. This paper will discuss a gamification approach for adding “Daily Missions” to WebCAT, the Web-based Center for Automated Testing. From an evaluation of results gathered from student experiences with this latest version of Web-CAT at Virginia Tech, this paper will highlight the valuable potential gamification has in boosting student engagement in computer science learning.

No / The use of serious games and gamification to promote learning has a long history. More recently, serious games and gamification have been used in clinical settings to promote treatment and recovery. Yet there is little evidence to support their use with populations that experience serious mental illness. A scoping review was used to answer the following research question, What is the current state of knowledge about how games and gamification are used to promote treatment of serious mental illness? Scoping reviews clarify, define, and develop conceptual boundaries within a topic area. Twenty studies were identified and reviewed by using thematic content analysis. A range of game types, formats, and technology were assessed. Six themes emerged from analysis. Serious games and the use of gamification to promote treatment have potential to engage persons with serious mental illness in game content and promote treatment outcomes. Game design that supported clear instruction, a coherent narrative, a smooth interface between mechanics and play, and service user involvement early in the process of game design were important for the successful promotion of engagement and learning. Games reviewed offered the opportunity for problem solving, collaboration, and goal-oriented activity that supported the delivery of therapeutic outcomes. The use of serious games and gamification to promote treatment of serious mental illness had high levels of feasibility and acceptability among both users and providers. The potential treatment value of games, however, is dependent on key features related to the games’ design, operation, and rationale.

Gamification är ett nytt innovativt sätt att uppmuntra till hållbart beteende genom att ta tillvara gamifications förmåga att påverka individers motivation och engagemang. Därför är det intressant att undersöka möjligheterna gamification har att användas av turistdestinationer som ett verktyg för att motivera besökare till ett mer hållbart beteende. Studien är inriktad främst på miljömässig hållbarhet, studien har en hermeneutisk utgångspunkt och datainsamling har skett genom semistrukturerade intervjuer med turistdestinationer. Studien syftar till att öka kunskapsområdet inom ämnet gamification som ett verktyg för hållbar turism. Studiens teoretiska ramverk är turistdestinationer och digital utveckling, gamification och turistupplevelser, eco-gamification, turisters miljövänliga beteende och hållbar turism.Studien behandlar sambandet mellan gamification, miljömässig hållbar utveckling, turistdestinationer och turistbeteende. Studien är uppdelad i tre faser; fas 1 är en förstudie i form av en kvantitativ enkätundersökning, fas 2 är en kvalitativ förstudie för fördjupad förförståelse och den tredje fasen innefattar datainsamling genom kvalitativa semistrukturerade intervjuer. Teman som framkom från den tematiska analysen av empirin är som följande: (1) gamification kan skapa nya innovativa turistupplevelser; (2) potentialen för gamification att användas som ett verktyg för miljömässig hållbar turism; (3) hur destinationer kan påverka turisters miljömedvetna beteende; (4) gamification medför negativa effekter och utmaningar i utvecklingen av turistupplevelser.Studiens resultat visar att samtliga destinationerna ser gamification som ett intressant verktyg för miljömässig hållbar turism, ett par av de intervjuade destinationerna använder, eller har använt, gamification som ett sätt att öka turisters miljömedvetna beteende. Tävlingar, lära sig något nytt och utvecklas anser destinationerna är de viktigaste drivkrafterna för att delta i en gamifierad aktivitet, men både inre och yttre motivation är viktigt att ha i beaktande. / Gamification is a new innovative way to encourage sustainable behavior by using gamification's ability to influence individuals motivation and commitment. Therefore, it is interesting to investigate the possibilities gamification has for being used by tourist destinations as a tool to motivate visitors to a more sustainable behavior. The study is focused primarily on environmental sustainability, the study has a hermeneutic research model and data collection has taken place through semi-structured interviews with tourist destinations. The study aims to increase the knowledge area within the subject of gamification as a tool for sustainable tourism. The study's theoretical framework is tourist destinations and digital development, gamification and tourist experiences, eco-gamification, tourists environmentally friendly behavior and sustainable tourism. The study deals with the connection between gamification, environmentally sustainable development, tourist destinations and tourist behaviour. The study is divided into three phases; phase 1 is a pre-study in the form of a quantitative survey, phase 2 is a qualitative pre-study for in-depth pre-understanding and the third phase includes data collection through qualitative semi-structured interviews. The themes that emerged from the thematic analysis of the empirical work are: (1) gamification can create new innovative tourist experiences; (2) the potential for gamification to be used as a tool for environmentally sustainable tourism; (3) how destinations can influence the environmentally conscious behavior of tourists; (4) negative effects and challenges of gamification in the development of tourist experiences. The results of the study show that all the destinations see gamification as an interesting tool for environmentally sustainable tourism. A couple of the interviewed destinations use, or have used, gamification as a way to increase the environmentally conscious behavior of tourists. Competitions, learning something new and progress are considered by the destinations to be the most important motivators for participating in a gamified activity. Both intrinsic and extrinsic motivators are important to take into account in the development of gamification. / <p>2024-05-29</p>

Tidigare studier har visat att majoriteten av anställda inom svenska organisationer har ett bristande i engagemang till sitt arbete, vilket kan bero på att feedback och belöning kommer alltför långt efter slutförandet av en uppgift. Forskning har även visat att yttre belöningar till följd av en prestation endast fungerar väl på kort sikt, men att det trots det finns företag som använder sig av yttre belöning för att motivera sina medarbetare. Ett exempel är säljorganisationer. Gamification är en relativt ny framväxande idé som innebär applicering av spelelement i icke spelliknande kontexter, för att skapa inre motivation och ett ökat engagemang hos människor. Syftet med studien är att analysera i vilket utsträckning direkt feedback och de karaktäristiska spelmekanikerna poäng, emblem, topplistor, levels, relationer, utmaningar, begränsningar och resa förekommer inom säljorganisationer, som inte uttalat använder sig av gamifierade system, för att skapa motiverade och engagerade medarbetare. Metoden bygger på en kvalitativ och abduktiv ansats, där empirin har samlats in genom semistrukturerade intervjuer med sex chefer från olika säljorganisationer. Resultatet visar att flertalet av spelmekanikerna används inom samtliga säljorganisationer, och att det inte finns någon spelmekanik som inte förekommer inom någon av organisationerna. Vidare förekommer poäng, relationer, utmaningar och begränsningar inom samtliga sex organisationer och levels är den spelmekanik som förekommer minst. Vissa skillnader gällande spelmekanikernas användande uppenbarades, även om syftet med användandet för samtliga organisationer är att skapa motivation och öka engagemanget hos säljarna. Feedback förekommer frekvent inom samtliga organisationer. Däremot uppenbarades en viss problematik i samband med direkt feedback, då den tenderar att komma en tid efter att en uppgift har slutförts, bland annat på grund av geografisk utspridning. / Previous studies have shown that the majority of employees within Swedish organisations lack commitment to their work, which can be due to the fact that feedback and reward is received late after the completion of a task. Research has also proved that extrinsic rewards as a result of a performance only work well in the short term, but nevertheless there are companies that still use extrinsic rewards to motivate their employees. Sales organisations are one example of that. Gamification is a relatively new emerging idea that involves application of game elements in a non-game context to create intrinsic motivation and to increase engagement among the people. The purpose of this study is to analyse to which extent direct feedback and the characteristic game mechanics points, badges, leaderboards, levels, relationship, challenges, restrictions and journey occur within sales organisations that do not claim to use gamified systems in order to motivate and engage employees. The method used is based on a qualitative and abductive approach where empirical data were collected through semi-structured interviews with six managers from different sales organisations. The result show that the majority of the game mechanics is used in all sales organisations and that there is none of the game mechanics that do not occur in any of the organisations. Moreover, points, relations, challenges and restrictions occur in all six organisations and levels is the game mechanic that occur the least. Some differences in the using of the game mechanics were revealed, although the purpose of the use in all of the organisations is to motivate and increase the engagement of the sellers. Feedback occurs frequently in all organisations. However, certain problems occurred associated with direct feedback as it tends to be received a while after the task has been completed due to geographic diffusion, among other things.

Gamification is a novel method to improve engagement, motivation, or participation in non-game contexts using game mechanics. To a large extent, gamification is a psychological- and design-oriented discipline, i.e., a lot of effort has to be spent already in the design phase of a gamification project. Subsequently, the design is implemented in information systems such as portals or enterprise resource planning applications. These systems act as mediators to transport a gameful design to its users. However, the efforts for the subsequent development and integration process are often underestimated. In fact, most conceptual gamification designs are never implemented due to the high development costs that arise from building the gamification solution from scratch, imprecise design or technical requirements, and communication conflicts between different stakeholders in the project. This thesis addresses these problems by systematically defining the phases and stakeholders of the overall gamification process. Furthermore, the thesis rigorously defines the conceptual requirements of gamification based on a broad literature review. The identified conceptual requirements are mapped to a domain-specific language, called the Gamification Modeling Language. Moreover, this thesis analyzes 29 existing gamification solutions that aim to decrease the implementation efforts of gamification. However, using the different language elements, it is shown that none of the existing solutions suffices all requirements. Therefore, a generic and reusable platform as runtime environment for gamification is proposed which fulfills all presented functional and non-functional requirements. As another benefit, it is shown how the Gamification Modeling Language can be automatically compiled into code for the gamification runtime environment and, thus, further reduces development efforts. Based on the developed artifacts and five real gamified applications from industry, it is shown that the efforts for the implementation of the gamification can be significantly reduced from several months or weeks to a few days. Since the technology is designed as a reusable service, future projects benefit continuously with regards to time and efforts.

It is challenging to motivate usage of IT services provided by government or public administration since the usage of such services is based on voluntariness. One way to incentivize usage is by making such services fun to use, which can be done by using gamification. Gamification is game-like elements in an otherwise non-game like service. This study aims to describe how gamification, from a usability perspective, can be used in a citizen report application. The strategy used in this study is design and creation where we develop an IT artefact that constitute a prototype. Hence, the method prototyping is used. Furthermore, usability is considered while developing this prototype. The scientific contribution of this study is the prototype itself, and insights on how to use gamification as a vehicle for usability. Two versions of the prototype were developed before tested by five focus groups, which added up to a total of 37 respondents. The focus groups answered a questionnaire and participated in a semi-structured group interview. The result of this was evaluated and used to improve the prototype and to find suggestions of how to implement gamification in the application. Our findings show that gamification can be implemented in the application and should be so by using a point system where the points can be cashed in for a reward of some sort. To counteract risks of vandalism the points should be handed out to the user after the suggestion in the report is considered and validated by the public administration providing the service. Gamification should be implemented to create satisfaction regarding usability. However, this study finds that accommodation of efficiency and effectiveness needs should be prioritized before satisfactory needs are implemented in the application. / Det är en utmaning att motivera användning av IT-tjänster som tillhandahålls av offentlig förvaltning eftersom användningen baseras på frivillighet. Ett sätt att motivera användning är att göra det roligt att använda tjänsten. Det kan ske med gamification. Gamification är spelliknande element i en, annars, icke-spelmässig tjänst. Denna studie syftar till att beskriva hur gamification, ur ett användbarhetsperspektiv, kan användas för att skapa en applikation för synpunktshantering. Forskningsstrategin som används är design and creation där vi utvecklar en IT-artefakt som utgörs av en prototyp för en synpunktshanteringsapplikation. Metoden som används för detta är prototyping. Vidare tas användbarhet i beaktande under utvecklingen av prototypen. Kunskapsbidraget för denna studie är dels prototypen och dels insikter om hur gamification kan användas för att skapa användbarhet. Två versioner av prototypen utvecklades initialt. Dessa testades av fem fokusgrupper med totalt 37 respondenter. Respondenterna deltog i en enkät samt en semistrukturerad gruppintervju. Resultatet av detta utvärderades sedan och användes för att förfina prototypen och för att ge förslag på hur gamification kan införas i applikationen. Denna studie visar att gamification kan implementeras i applikationen och bör göras så genom ett poängssystem där poängen kan användas för en belöning. För att motverka risker med skadegörelse ska poängen delas ut efter en inrapporterad synpunkt har behandlats av kommunen som tillhandahåller tjänsten. Gamification ska användas för att det är underhållande och belönande vilket skapar tillfredsställelse ur ett användbarhetsperspektiv. Vi konstaterar också att ändamålsenlighet och effektivitet måste tillgodoses innan gamification, som tillfredsställande element, införs.

Submitted by Fernando Souza (fernandoafsou@gmail.com) on 2017-08-11T13:06:29Z No. of bitstreams: 1 arquivototal.pdf: 2849167 bytes, checksum: da520bd6d31edcea082e420c9377e88f (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2017-08-11T13:06:29Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 arquivototal.pdf: 2849167 bytes, checksum: da520bd6d31edcea082e420c9377e88f (MD5) Previous issue date: 2016-06-27 / One of the main problems of the Distance Learning (DL) is the lack in communication and collaboration among students, which is mainly caused by the physical distance among them. Researches in education show that collaboration between students, where they assist each other in understanding the educational content, is one of the fundamental parts of the learning process. Virtual learning environments, such as Moodle, provide some resources such as Forums and Chats to support collaboration. However, such resources are not enough to motivate collaboration. This and other aspects are the main causes to the high number of retention and dropout of students in the DL courses, since they are not able to adapt themselves to the features of this type of learning modality. Our work uses concepts of mutual evaluation, integrated to gamification elements, as an alternative to motivate collaboration among students in small groups. In order, the literature indicates that collaborative processes are more efficient when applied to groups composed of 4 or 5 students. One of the main contributions of our work is to develop an automatic mutual evaluation process, which can be integrated to the mutual evaluation carried out by students, so that the final results are more reliable. The validation of this proposal was carried out with disciplines of the Informatics Graduation course of the Virtual UFPB. The results show that, apart to increase the reliability, our approach also enables the identification of biases along the mutual evaluation process and generates different ways to compare the performance of students and groups of students, considering different attributes proposed in this work. / Um dos problemas da educação a distância é a falta de comunicação e colaboração entre os alunos, o que é causado principalmente pela distância física entre eles. Pesquisas em educação mostram que a colaboração entre alunos, em que eles se ajudam no entendimento do conteúdo educacional, é uma das partes fundamentais do processo de aprendizagem. Ambientes virtuais de aprendizagem, como o Moodle, disponibilizam recursos como Fóruns e Chats para suporte a colaboração. Porém, tais recursos são insuficientes para motivar tal colaboração. Esse e outros fatores têm causado um grande índice de retenção e evasão nos cursos a distância, uma vez que os estudantes não conseguem se adaptar as características dessa modalidade de ensino. Este trabalho utiliza conceitos de avaliação mútua, integrados a elementos de gamificação, como forma de motivar a colaboração de estudantes em pequenos grupos de estudo. De fato, a literatura indica que processos colaborativos são mais eficientes em grupos compostos por 4 ou 5 estudantes. Uma das principais contribuições do trabalho é o desenvolvimento de um processo de avaliação mútua automático, o qual pode ser integrado ao processo de avaliação mútua feita pelos alunos, de modo que os resultados das avaliações sejam mais confiáveis. A validação da proposta foi feita com turmas do curso de Graduação em Computação da UFPB virtual. Os resultados mostram que, além de garantir uma maior segurança no processo de avaliação, também é possível verificar grandes discrepâncias nesse processo, assim como gerar diferentes formas de comparação entre o desempenho de alunos e grupos de alunos, considerando diferentes atributos propostos neste trabalho.

Tidigare mänskliga aktiviteter påverkar de klimatförändringarna som vi ser idag. Ett miljövänligare val i en stadsmiljö är att använda kollektivtrafiken, men både bilar och bussar släpper ut mängder av koldioxid och farliga partiklar. Det optimala hade varit att få fler människor att välja cykeln istället för bilen eller kollektivtrafiken eftersom användningen av cyklar inte påverkar miljön eller människors hälsa negativt. För att ändra människors beteende genomfördes en studie om vilka gamification-mekanismer som skulle kunna fungera inom detta område. Målgruppen tillhörde till största del spelarkategorin fria själar men blev motiverade av mekanismer från alla olika kategorier. Man kan utifrån resultatet dra slutsatsen att ifall man ska använda sig av gamification inom detta område behöver man jobba på olika sätt mot olika målgrupper och framför allt hitta vilka olika grupper som finns och vilka mekanismer som motiverar de olika gupperna för att ta fram de mest optimala mekanismerna. / Former human activities that happened in the past affect the climate change that we see today. An environmentally friendly choice in an urban environment is to use public transport, but cars and buses emit amounts of carbon dioxide and hazardous particles. The ideal would have been to get more people to choose a bike instead of a car or public transport because the use of bicycles does not affect the environment or human health negative. A study was conducted on the gamification mechanics in order to change people’s behavior. The target group belonged mostly to the user category “free spirits” but they were also motivated by game mechanics from every user category. The results from the study conclude that if one should make use of gamification in this area then they need to work in different ways to approach different audiences and to find different groups of gamers. One should also find various game mechanics that motivate the users to be able to develop the most optimal platform for motivation.

Der Beitrag geht der Fragestellung nach, welche Gamedesign-Elemente sich als attraktive und strategisch sinnvolle Ergänzung für die sächsische Lernplattform OPAL identifizieren lassen und wie mithilfe solcher Elemente die Motivation zur OPAL-Nutzung und im Zuge dessen auch zum Studium gesteigert werden kann.