Encouraging Teacher-Sourcing of Social Recommendations Through Participatory Gamification Design

摘要

Teachers and learners who search for learning materials in open educational resources (OER) repositories greatly benefit from feed­back and reviews left by peers who have activated these resources in their class. Such feedback can also fuel social-based ranking algorithms and recommendation systems. However, while educational users appre­ciate the recommendations made by other teachers, they are not highly motivated to provide such feedback by themselves. This situation is com­mon in many consumer applications that rely on users' opinions for per­sonalisation. A possible solution that was successfully applied in sev­eral other domains to incentivise active participation is gamification. This paper describes for the first time the application of a comprehen­sive cutting-edge gamification taxonomy, in a user-centred participatory-design process of an OER system for Physics, PeTeL, used throughout Israel. Physics teachers were first involved in designing gamification fea­tures based on their preferences, helping shape the gamification mecha­nisms likely to enhance their motivation to provide reviews. The results informed directly the implementation of two gamification elements that were implemented in the learning environment, with a second experiment evaluating their actual effect on teachers' behaviour. After a long-term, real-life pilot of two months, teachers' response rate was measured and compared to the prior state. The results showed a statistically significant effect, with a 4X increase in the total amount of recommendations per month, even when taking into account the 'Covid-pandemic effect'.