2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Gamification is becoming increasingly popular in engaging students in the classroom. The value of games is in their scoring system. Unlike traditional graded assessments, games start from zero and add up for success, motivating the player to keep playing. In addition, games provide achievable, short-term successes, enticing the player with constant rewards. Although there are many game-like elements implemented in in-person classes, however, there are lackings of reports on the efficacy of the technique in online asynchronous graduate classes. ClassTools is a gamification platform where many educational tools such as ‘Fling the Teacher’ are freely available. The online interactive game - ‘Fling the Teacher’ is used in this study. ‘Fling the Teacher’ is modeled after Angry Birds, a popular casual puzzle video game, and provides 15 multiple choice questions for the user to answer in an engaging environment. If the players answer all 15 questions correctly, they get to fling an avatar of a teacher with a slingshot in one minute. This study focuses on asynchronous online graduate courses where core classes of the applied manufacturing engineering curriculum were tested with the game - ‘Fling the Teacher’. The gamified tool was implemented in the middle and end of the course with each having 15 multiple choice questions. An online survey was conducted to gather students’ perceptions of the gamified tool on i) engagement in an online learning environment and ii) the effectiveness compared to traditional assessments such as quizzes. The data from the survey show that the students viewed the gamified tool made the online learning environment more engaging. In addition, students viewed that the tool helped them to learn more effectively compared to traditional quizzes.