Enhancing Motivation To Learn In A Biology Laboratory Course Through Gaming

Abstract

In this design case, we describe our work to develop a gameful learning design for use in an introductory, undergraduate biology laboratory course for science majors. Our design team included three university-based mathematics and science educators and a biologist responsible for the management of curriculum and instruction in the course under study. The gameful learning design was employed during the four weeks of plant evolutionary life history instruction. Key challenges to the design and implementation of gameful learning included the adaptation of instruction from teacher-centered to student-centered and establishing novel learning conditions in the eight laboratory sections so as to determine the value of two different elements of game design, repeat-testing and leaderboard with badges.