How to merge gamification efforts for programming and modelling: a tool implementation perspective

Gamification, that is the use of gaming elements into non-game contexts, has gained a lot of interests in all those settings where the engagement of target users needs to be stimulated. Education and training have been historically struggling with keeping “students” motivated to pursue the completion of their learning paths. Lately these issues have been exacerbated by distance education: on the one hand, virtual participation to courses makes education far more accessible than requiring students to seat in the same classroom (and at the same time); on the other hand, the missing “community building” conveyed by physically attending the same course remarkably reduces students’ engagement. In this respect, gamification has been applied as an engagement tool, e.g. in programming courses, by introducing challenges, awards, leader boards, and so forth, with the aim of motivating the students in keeping their efforts for completing their studies.In this paper we describe and compare our experiences in gamification solutions for programming and modelling. In particular, we distinguish some desirable features to have in gamification solutions for modelling courses, and illustrate our experiences in realizing them concretely. Our observations testify that while in principle many of the gamification elements coming from programming courses could be suitable also to engage students in modelling, there exist still remarkable obstacles in realizing them in practice.