TURKISH TEACHERS’ GAMIFICATION USER TYPES AND PREFERENCES OF GAME ELEMENTS FOR THEIR INSTRUCTION

2023-9-26
Özdemir, Merve
Gamification has become quite widespread in various fields worldwide, including education. The user or player type approach, which departs from the one-size-fits-all model, provides tailored gamified experiences aligned with individual motivations. This study aims to identify gamification user types of in-service teachers in Turkey and explore potential differences based on demographic factors. It also investigates teachers’ preferred game elements for their instruction. Furthermore, the relationships between gamification user types and preferred game elements were investigated. Participants are 1961 in-service teachers who took part in “Digital Teachers Project”, emphasizing their role as designer teachers. The study employed descriptive, causal comparative, and correlational research methods. The results indicated that the dominant gamification user type among teachers is the philanthropist, followed by free spirit, achiever, socialiser, and player, along with disruptor being the least dominant user type. The top five game element preferences among in-service teachers are reinforcement and feedback, onboarding, relationships, narrative, and teams. Moreover, weak correlations were found between some game elements and gamification user types. For instance, player is associated with more game elements (nine in total) compared to other types among gamification user types; achievements, challenges, badges and points have a weak but positive correlation with the player user type. Another important finding is that a game element has correlations with more than one user type. i.e. it was preferred by several user types, e.g. relationships have correlations with all user types. In conclusion, understanding in-service teachers’ gamification user types may greatly benefit teacher professional development, assist gamification designers and policymakers in creating more engaging educational materials, and address the gap in the literature regarding gamification user types among in-service teachers.
Citation Formats
M. Özdemir, “TURKISH TEACHERS’ GAMIFICATION USER TYPES AND PREFERENCES OF GAME ELEMENTS FOR THEIR INSTRUCTION,” M.S. - Master of Science, Middle East Technical University, 2023.