Learn City
What is Learn City?
The idea for Learn City was born during the hackathon "Level-Up Society" organized by Showcode. We would like to thank them for organizing the event.The main theme of the hackathon was gamification. We had to choose one of the 5 application areas: Mental Health, Finance, Retail, Learning and Security. We, of course, chose Learning.
Because during the hackathon weekend it was unfortunately not possible to develop the complete software, Janusan Lingeswaran and Philipp Kant decided to finish the demo after the hackathon in their spare time.
A 2011 study (DOI:10.1016/j.system.2011.01.009) shows that intrinsic motivation to learn generally declines in participating students from third to sixth grade. Another paper (DOI:10.1016/j.sbspro.2014.08.287) shows that rewards are not harmful, but that there is a relationship between external motivators and task-oriented motivation. Rewards are primarily seen as beneficial rather than detrimental to human freedom and independence. Some research has shown that the dichotomy between extrinsic and intrinsic motivation is unnecessary, even unacceptable.
This gave us the idea to make learning fun for elementary school students to increase motivation through gamification concepts: Learn City, a virtual city representing a school class.
We tried to pick up as many gamification concepts as possible and integrate them in a natural way into Learn City. We used or planned to use the following concepts:
Gamification concepts in Learn City
Theme
The class is a virtual city with buildings for subjects. Every student has his own apartment.
Personalization
Own Avatars and own appartements that can be furnished according to your own taste.
Virtual Economy + Investment + Collect & Trade + Gifting / Sharing
An in-game currency which you earn by doing tests successfully etc. to buy clothes and furniture to improve your own apartment. Items can be traded and gifted to friends.
Progress / Feedback
The students get EXP for doing tests.
Loss Aversion + Consequences
The students have to reach certain levels/progress every week. The students lose money/EXP if they don’t.
Curiosity / Mystery Box
If the students finish a chapter, a mystery box will appear. They can win money or items.
Scarcity
Some items are very rare/expensive.
Random Rewards
For each day a student participates in the game, they receive a random reward.
Leaderboards / Ladders + Badges / Achievements
Leaderboards for every subject + overall. Badges if a student is the best in a week or completes a test/task very well.
Meaning / Purpose
Semester goal for the whole class. When the whole class (all levels added together) reaches a certain level in the semester, they go out for ice cream at the end of the semester, for example.
