This poster was presented at the 2015 Australian Association for Research in Education, in Freemantle, Australia, and was awarded the Australian Council of Deans of Education (ACDE) sponsored Postgraduate / ECR Researcher Poster Award for best poster. This poster introduces theoretical frameworks with which to design meaningful gamification interventions. It also has augmented reality elements hidden on it!

1. Gamification not Zombification:
Design thinking for education
in complex changing environments
JOIN THE FIGHT AGAINST ZOMBIFICATION!
The zombification apocalypse is here! Current approaches to gamification design in education are simply overlaying old activities with new signifiers, instead
of encouraging and rewarding new activities that create knowledge and learning. This transactional and extrinsic approach is known as zombification
(Conway, 2014). Zombies are extrinsically motivated learners that focus on signifiers like test scores, points and badges, instead of transformative learning and
creation of new knowledge and practice.
You are a solider in this battle to achieve transformative learning. Begin your zombie survival training now, by participating in the gamified zombie training and
joining the discussion. You can access it through the augmented reality hiding on this poster!
AUTHORS
Kerstin Oberprieler 1,2, Matt Bacon1, Simon N. Leonard1 and Robert N. Fitzgerald1.
1Inspire Centre, Faculty of Education, Science, Technology and Mathematics, University of
Canberra, Canberra. 2ThinkPlace, Canberra. kerstin@thinkplace.com.au
Join the fight
against
zombification now!
1. Download AR studio
2. Point your device at this
poster to view the augmented
reality
3. Join the gamified zombie
training
4. Post your thoughts on Twitter
with #AAREzombie
Level 1: Define the challenge
Gamification is the application of game principles and game
mechanics to non-game contexts, such as schools and workplaces.
Gamification is becoming a popular approach to learning and
performance, due to its ability to engage people in collaborative
problem solving and to increase the contributions of a diverse range of
participants (Buckley and Doyle, 2014).
Zombification is a common practice
Critics of gamification, however, point to a tendency for workplace
learning games to simply overlay old activities with new signifiers
(Conway, 2014). That is, the game offers points or badges or other
symbolic rewards that highlight aspects of existing activities, and in so
doing treats the participants as zombies senselessly in search of
extrinsic reward. This may lead to short term improvement in simple
behaviours, but rarely transforms complex practice.
Design thinking provides opportunity
The emergence of design thinking and design-research provides a
renewed opportunity for expansive learning. Design thinking tools such
as user-centred research, ideation, prototyping and conjecture
mapping can help make visible the contexts and histories of
educational game development.
Design-based research allows for
conjecture mapping
Conjecture mapping is a tool that has developed within the design-
based research (DBR) approach (Sandoval, 2014). DBR is an approach
that seeks to increase the impact and transferability of educational
research. It stresses the need for theory building alongside the
development of design principles that direct and improve both
practice and research (Leonard and Fitzgerald, 2015). Conjecture
mapping assists in this goal by fully articulating the purpose of, and
decision making within, an educational design. It recognises that
learning design involves conjecture of the activity that will be created,
and theoretical conjecture about how that activity leads to learning.
Gamification1
2
Learning environments are increasingly complex
Places of learning, including schools and workplaces, are increasingly
complex and fluid social environments that make designing effective
learning challenging (Engeström 2010). Understood as an expansive
activity, learning is about acquiring the tools of the learner’s socio-
cultural context or what Vygotsky (1987) described as ‘growing into
the intellectual life of those around them’.
Learning occurs in a social and cultural context
Cultural-historical activity theory (CHAT) contends not only that context
matters in learning, but also that context is an essential and
inescapable component of human learning (Gustavsson, 2009). From
this perspective, learning is the process of socialisation into the
intellectual and cultural world. CHAT positions learning as being about
acquiring the tools of the learner’s socio-cultural context (Vygotsky,
1987). The purpose of learning is essentially for this participation, and so
the tools acquired through learning only make sense when used for
activity or interaction with context.
Expertise lies in mind-body-world systems
Recent work in cognitive ecology supports this model of learning, with
growing understandings of how the human brain works leading to a
theory of mind that suggests that expertise lies in cognitive systems
involving mind-body-world systems, and not simply in the human part
of such systems (Hutchins, 2010; Rueschemeyer et al., 2009).
Cognition is embodied and enacted
Taking a cognitive ecology view, processes of doing work, becoming
an expert and evolving work practices are the same learning
processes (Hutchins, 2010). Learning practices and processes only
makes sense when used for activity, that is, the interaction between
the learner and their context.
An active, embodied and enacted understanding of learning that
connects upwards, downwards and sideways stands in contrast to the
information processing view of cognition that arguably dominates
many parts of contemporary education design (Gustavsson, 2009).
Activity TheoryCognitive ecology
Level 2: Collect some theory
Context analysis The model
Level 3: Build some tools
The gap is our models to design gamified learning
While we broadly agree with such criticisms, our contention is that the
lack of evidence of transformative gamification does not show an
inherent flaw in gamification as a valid education design, but rather it
shows a need for developing better models and tools for designing
gamified learning.
Used in education, gamification can challenge the pervasive
paradigm in which the learner acquires small, identifiable and
concrete components of knowledge or skill from a teacher who
imparts them. This standard one-way transaction model is becoming
redundant with the ever-increasing speed of change and creation of
new fields of knowledge. Gamification, in contrast, seeks to promote
learning by promoting new activity including new interactions with the
social context.
When designing gamified educational activities and outcomes, the following design principles should be applied:
1. Consider the whole system
It can be seen that the context and system surrounding the learner is
as important as the concept being learned, and that educational
design must consider the effect of individual, institutional and social
sub-systems when designing educational activities. Overlaying extrinsic
rewards onto current activities is not sufficient. The gamified system
needs to be whole and fully functioning, integrating individuals, teams,
activities and objects.
2. Integrate the elements of the unique context
User-centeredness is an important goal for design-research as gaining
a deep understanding of the context and the underlying needs and
motives of the various users is difficult. The gamified system must cater
for different player types within the unique context that is being
gamified. The implementation of the gamification must also consider
the historicity of the system, that is, the previous attempts and current
structures to reward behaviour.
3. Allow play and evolve the gamified activity with
the context Games and their educational or workplace context
will mutually transform each other over time. The gamified system must
therefore account and design for this and designers must not assume
they are working with an unchanging, or even stable, system. A
flexible, evolving design will ensure the mechanics continue to be
relevant and meaningful. Effective gamified designs will always be in
developmental mode.
4. Measure things you’ve never done before
Learning is currently evaluated in terms of the achievement of various
pre-known and typically short-term goals. Designs that evolve are, by
definition, leading to unknown outcomes and should be evaluated
against their capacity to create value with the system as a whole. The
model presented in this poster might form the basis for such a
changed measurement and evaluation system.
Level 4: Apply the tools
3
Design principles for transformative gamification
DBR Context Analysis Model
We introduce a model to show how design thinking
tools such as user-centred research, ideation,
prototyping and conjecture mapping can help
make visible the contexts and histories of
educational game development. This model utilises
the concepts of CHAT and ecological cognition
within a design approach.
Understanding systems within systems
The model suggests that activity systems, as
understood through CHAT, create ‘detours’ in the
conjecture maps educational designers might
develop. By including an emphasis on the social
context, the model also draws on critical theory as a
way to tease out the historical context of activity
systems; and on personality psychology and work in
creativity to acknowledge that an individual within
an activity system might themselves be understood
as a complex set of subsystems such as knowledge,
motivation and affect.
REFERENCES
http://dx.doi.org/10.608
4/m9.figshare.1606241
3D printing
http://dx.doi.org/10.6084/m9.
figshare.1517641
Augmented reality
http://dx.doi.org/10.6084/m9.
figshare.1608937
Gamification
http://dx.doi.org/10.6084/m9.
figshare.1608937
Learning spaces
http://dx.doi.org/10.6084/m9.
figshare.1608935
EDUCATIONAL DESIGN
EDUCATIONAL ACTIVITIES
OUTCOMES
Social
milieu
Individual
sub-systems
Institutional
milieu
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