Proposed Framework for Gamifying Research Activities

Shigeki Ohira† 　　　 Saya Sugiura‡ 　 　 Katashi Nagao‡

†Information Technology Center, Nagoya University 　　 ‡ Graduate School of Information Science, Nagoya University

E-mail: ohira@nagoya-u.jp

10/7/2015 TEEM2015

Technological Ecosystems for Enhancing Multiculturality (TEEM’15)Track 4. Gamification Ecosystems

In the TEEM2014• We proposed Gamified Discussion System• As future work, we raised the following tasks

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Today’s theme

Introduction• Research activities

– Survey, seminar, experiment, writing paper, etc.– Steady works– Sometimes going well and other times not so well– Often continue without immediate visible results

• For students in research laboratory– Desirable to increase motivation naturally

• Best way is to enjoy research itself– Difficult to maintain a high level of motivation

• Until research is on track and everyday tasks become more interesting

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Purpose and Approach• Establish comprehensive gamification framework

for general research activities

• Provide a research activity platform– Carefully recording, organizing and visualizing activities

by attaching reciprocal relations• Organizing issues and tasks arising in discussion• Visualizing results when issues & tasks transition to real actions

• Introduce a gamification framework for activities– Break down research into detailed activities– Help maintain the cycle of research activity

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Study Assumptions• Gamification is not a panacea for motivation

• What is important for primary research activities– Discussion within research group– Setting appropriate issues and tasks on students’ own

• Focus on discussion– Clarify what must be done in everyday research activity– Organize issues and tasks based on opinions and advice

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Gamification Framework for Research Activity• Classify various actions in research activity• Apply gamification to give appropriate feedback

for each action• Define gamification framework

– Eight game design elements: • Goals: Step-by-step goal setting• Visualization: Show student’s changing status and progress• Rules: Enable users in research laboratory to evaluate one another• Design: Provide rewards for using system• Social: Promote competition and cooperation among users • Tutorial: Familiarize novices with how to use system• Difficulty adjustment: Adjust degree of difficulty and complexity of goals• Play cycle: Perpetuate cycle from goal setting, to action, to accomplishment

Research Activities and Actions• Classify research activities into 11 main activities

– Gaining expertise (22)– Deciding research themes (4) – Implementation (6) – Deciding evaluation methods (3) – Experimentation (9) – Project meetings (8)– Seminar presentation (8)– Discussion (6)– Conference participation (8)– Conference presentation (18)– Writing papers (8)

• Subdivide activities into about 500 actions– Simple and practicable– Students gain a range of experience

• Prepare about 240 performance results– Automatically-measured with existing systems

Divide each main activity into several sub-activities (numbers in parentheses)

Research Activity Map: Activity Tree and Action-Result Graphs

Gaining expertiseConference presentation

DecidingResearchthemes

Implementation

DecidingEvaluationmethods

ExperimentationProject meetings

Seminar presentation

Discussion

Conference participation

Writing papers

e.g.) Discussion (main activity)

Main activity

Sub-activities

ActionsResults

• [Discussion]→[Ask question at seminar]– Actions: Ask <*> questions– Results: Asked <*> questions,

Cumulative question number has topped <**> times

Discussion

e.g.) ProgrammingActionsResults

Implementation

Main activity

Sub-activities

Programming

• [Gaining expertise],[Implementation]→[Programming]– Actions: Write server/client program, Write I/O process of DB– Results: Committed <*> times, Wrote <**> lines of code,

Cumulative total of code has topped <***> lines, …

Gaining expertise

(sub-activity of Gaining expertise and Implementation)

Research Activity Concierge (prototype)• Three basic tools

– Research Activity Organizer/Visualizer/Watchdog• RAO

– Organizing issues and tasksbased onseminar content

• RAV– Visualizing research

activity based on performance ofissues and tasks

• RAW– Monitoring

information I/Ofrom RAO and RAV

– Give information feedback

Research Activity Concierge

RAO

Research Activity Map

Setting actions

Users

RAVRAW

External tools and systems(proprietary and commercial software)

Research Activities

Contentsserver Selecting

statements

Organizing statements

Seminarcontents

Storing data

Changing statusand visualization

Notifying stats andrecommendation

Collecting ofactivity log

Running actions

Mutualevaluation

User’s process

System process

Checkprogress

RAO: Research Activity Organizer• Step 1) Select statements in Discussion Browser• Step 2) Organize statements using RAO

– Create notes for various research activities– Record detailed information in memos– Quote statements and linking to memos– Attach status attribute and tags to created memos

• “Task”, “In-progress”, “Completed”Discussion Browser

RAO

RAV: Research Activity Visualizer• Use external tools and systems

– Quantitatively handling results of putting issues and tasks into practice

– Provide API/plug-in– Collect outlines of

actions based onissues and tasks

• Visualize issues, tasks, and relationships to resultsfrom related activities– Provide overall view of the state of each activity– Jump from currently in-progress issues and tasks to

RAO’s notes and memos– Recommend next actions and guide users (unimplemented)

TDAnnotator TDEditor

Eclipse, Visual Studio,

VCS Tools

Discussion Recorder/Browser

Research Activity Visualizer

PaperWritingSurvey

Excel, Numerical Analysis

& CAE Tools

PowerPoint,Presentation

Practice

Development

Presentation

Discussion

Experiment&

Analysis

RAW: Research Activity Watchdog• Send notification to users

– Run on PC, tablet, smartphone, smartwatch• Present issue and task progress and results of

monitoring research activity statistics• Recommend actions to do next• Give gamification feedback

– Awarding badges, evaluating activities• Enable easy communication

within research group

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RAC MyPage

Use Case and Ongoing Data Collection

You should create API for paper writing.

[Note]“Development tasks”

[Memo]Editor hook

RAV

Run action“Create script”

Summarize work,describe memo,

make self-assessmentRAW

Send notification

Evaluate results of activity

Feedback

Organize statementsCreate note/memo

Discussion

User

Others

Commit to server

・ Seminar content・ Notes, memos・ Source code・ Logs　 - Action 　 - Evaluation　 - UI operation

Select action“Write server program”

Check stats/badges,use items

Check progressand feedback

RAO

RAO

Summary and Future Work• Summary

– Introduction of comprehensive gamification framework for general research activity

– Development of prototype system “Research Activity Concierge”

• Future task– Verify effectiveness of proposed gamification framework

through practical use• Compare the amount of activity with/without system use• Verify the cost and effectiveness of mutual evaluation※ Now under test operation. Plan to start operation in Oct. 2015 (2nd semester beginning in Japan)

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Obrigado pela sua atenção

THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION

Preliminary Slides SLIDES

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Evaluation of Action as Goal Setting• Three types

– Self-assessment• Five points• Sweet tendency

– Mutual evaluation• Not required (in good faith)• Quantitatively and Qualitatively

– Automatic evaluation• Using external tools and systems • Quantitatively

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DRIP Cycle• A cycle of four phases representing knowledge

activities focused on discussion

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Investigation

Recording new knowledgebased on past discussion

Preparation

Creating of presentationmaterials using records

ReflectionArranging of

discussion content

DiscussionCreating of reusablediscussion content