Introduction

Motivation and engagement are the main goals in using gamification (^{KAPP; BLAIR; MESCH, 2014}; ZICHERMMAN; CUNINGHAN, 2011). Gamification is about the use of game mechanics and game thinking in non-game contexts (^{DETERDING; DIXON; KHALED; NACKE, 2011}) to any projects, even in education (^{WERBACH; HUNTER, 2012}). According to ^{Kapp (2013}), this strategy can improve learners’ performance in learning. The purpose of the work described in this paper is to understand if the use of a game design strategy can help adolescent Brazilian students with dyslexia to be motivated and engaged in a reading activity, and also to verify if it helps to increase students’ awareness about their dyslexic difficulties.

Gamification is not about points, badges, leader boards or programs that help students to have fun or fulfil activities at school; instead, it is about being involved with compromise and feeling motivated (^{VILLAGRASA; FONSECA; REDONDO, 2014}). In the specific case of students with dyslexia, motivation is essential because these learners are constantly feeling demotivated in academic activities (^{CARVALHAIS, 2010}). Hence, they need to feel they can overcome their difficulties in reading, to develop new skills and learn new skills.

This paper presents a study developed with students with dyslexia and teachers of special education of two schools located in the city of Belém, in Brazil, and describes part of a PhD research entitled Gamification in the learning of reading of Brazilian Students with dyslexia, developed in the Doctoral Programme of Multimedia in Education of Aveiro University, Portugal. Its methodology applied is qualitative: scales and opened interviews were applied aiming to get feedback of the participants about the test of a prototype described as a gamified storytelling tool. Specifically, the study aimed to understand if: (i) the inclusion of game design elements provides more engagement and motivation; (ii) the use of a gamified storytelling contributes to students’ learning. Data was collected through the students and teachers’ perspectives about the game mechanics used in the prototype.

The first section of this paper presents a briefly overview about the concept of gamification, research on gamification and dyslexia, and game design elements. Section named Procedures and Study Design includes the design of the prototype - a gamified storytelling resource. The main results are present subsequently; and a discussion and conclusions about the participants understanding of the contributions of the game mechanics to motivation, engagement and learning is presented in the last session.

Materials and Methods

Case Selection: participants

The study design that supported the research presented in this paper was based on an immersive process developed with 4 participants: two adolescent Brazilian students with dyslexia of two Brazilian Elementary Schools and four teachers, aimed to conceptualize and test a gamified storytelling tool.

Study Design

This study follows a qualitative approach, which means it is interested on creating meaning as a central concept (^{COUTINHO, 2016}), and on building of meanings in the context investigated. Its main methodological inspiration is Design Thinking, an iterative and human-centred approach applied to define solutions with the purpose of solving problems (^{CARROL, 2014}). The research process was conducted in four adapted phases, as seen in figure 1:

These phases represent the process of creation of a gamified prototype and each one of them fulfilled specific functions, as shown in table 1:

The phases of the whole process resulted in the creation and testing of a prototype of a gamified storytelling.

Data Collection

Participants took part in sessions of activities during the prototyping phase of the gamified tool. Along with these sessions, questionnaires and opened interviews were applied after testing the digital-version of the prototype.

These instruments were used to collect the participants’ perspectives. Interviews were conducted to assess the use of game elements, as challenges and levels/progression, feedback reaction, etc. Interviews were recorded in audio and subsequently transcribed. They lasted between 12-20 minutes each one.

Data Analysis

In the questionnaires’ analysis, values were assigned to each agreement according to table 2:

Data was tabbed by using simple statistics with the agreement value multiplied by the number of answers received, and also the agreements average.

As to opened interviews, the content analysis technique (^{BARDIN, 2009}) was used in three analytical phases: pre-analysis, material exploration and results treatment and interpretation.

The first phase permitted us to develop the indicators, that is, the theme elements that were frequently repeated over the text that would enable us to discuss the results.

In second stage, with the purpose to understand the meaning ascribed to the data, after proceeding with exploration of the data, it was possible,

to stablish two main classifications: (i) the recording units - sentences related to the perceptions of the students repeated throughout the text, which allows to trace thematic units about the investigation; and (ii) the context units - the text segments used as unit of comprehension to identify the sentences defined as recording units;

To enumerate the recording units. This process was developed by quantifying the presence or absence of units.

To categorize the content, an operation was used to classify the units in classes that bring together data information for each conception and organize the messages (^{BARDIN, 2009}). Category system was defined in the process of treatment of results and interpretations. The study allowed to build sub-categories emerged from the content. The frequency of indicators of the categories was identified.

Results

This gamified tool was created according to students reading experience and difficulties; hence it is adapted to their skills and reading level. Along testing, they were challenge to face their difficulties when trying to comply with the missions. In order to help them in this goal, teachers assumed the hole of guides by helping in word recognition, text and missions’ comprehension, and mainly giving sustained feedback.

Tests were developed in a reading process split in three steps:

Pre-reading: it was made prediction about theme and content, and activation of previous knowledge from the application of activities with figures and title analysis;

Reading: this part meant the reading of the chapters and accomplishment of all missions;

Post-reading: application of scales and interviews, in order to get participants evaluation.

Tests mainly provided participants evaluation about the contributions of game mechanics to affective and learning domain.

Questionnaires’ results

Questionnaires’ were applied only to the students. Data was tabbed by using simple statistics with the agreement value multiplied by the number of votes received, and also the agreements average.

Table 5 summarizes results of motivation and engagement scale:

As evidence, motivation and engagement are on average from 4 to 5: these results are perceptibly positive representing students’ agreement with statements about contributions of the gamified storytelling to the affective domain.

Table 6 presents results of students’ perceived learning scale:

Findings of table 6 reveal an average from 3,5 to 5, demonstrating more agreement with the statements. Student of Case 01 could not give opinion about two statements ‘Connect parts of the text’ and ‘Use of adjectives in description text’; hence she selected the neutral value. Most of values express agreement, that is, a positive evaluation about the contribution of the gamified storytelling to learning.

Open-ended interviews results

This instrument was applied to teachers and students, since it was aimed to know their verbalization about the use of the tool.

The results of the content analysis for students and teachers are presented in tables 7 and 8. Shortened terms are used in tables in order to identify the participant’s frequency of utterances: S1 (student 1), S2 (student 2), T1 (teacher 1) and T2 (teacher 2):

STUDENTS

TEACHERS

Comparing data in table 7 allows verifying that some frequencies detach the type of game design element that seems to contribute more to motivation and engagement: missions, at first, and subsequently storytelling, game experience and time. Regarding the cognitive domain, student 1 reveals more awareness about her difficulties along the use of the prototype than student 2. The latter was able to relate the game elements individually, at least once, with some types of learning.

In table 8, the most prominent findings in teachers’ verbalization demonstrate that these participants perceived more contributions of game mechanics to motivation and engagement than to reading learning.

Discussion and conclusions

Participants were able to assess the contributions of the game mechanics applied to the prototype from their experience to the cognitive and affective domain.

Interpretations and Inferences

Returning to the central questions of this work, it is possible to say that results provided suggestive answers about the application of a lay of game elements/structure to a narrative to the motivation/engagement and learning. Therefore, let is focus on these main domains below.

Contributions to the affective domain

In both scale and opened-interview, students were able to have a sense of enjoyment and motivation by exploring the gamified tool and progressing through chapters representing levels. As widely discussed in literature of gamification in education (ZICHERMMAN; CUNNINGHAN, 2011; ^{LI; GROSSMAN; FITZMAURICE, 2012}; ^{DETERDING; DIXON; KHALED; NACKE, 2011}), this strategy is used to foster motivation and engagement. Hence, in the context of special education, it was scrutinized how individual game elements impact of students’ motivation and engagement.

Analysis of scales indicates that students perceived this application of gamification as providing strong motivational effects. In the course of the analysis, it was identified that all the game strategies used positively influenced motivation in that particular teaching environment. Thus, the tool seems to have potential to increase affective domain, mainly as for fun and enjoyment.

In general, participants commented that the game and the storytelling were fun and interesting as a reading activity, as presented in table 9:

References to fun in these kind of tools reveals the test of the gamified tool as an enjoyable experience, and this exactly what was planned to this tool to be for the participants. According to Zichermman and Cunninghan (2011), fun must be the first the “job #1” when planning an educational resource, in order to provoke this sensation of enjoyment.

As these students have reading impairments, one of the main purposes of this work was add a lay of game mechanics to try to give fun to an academic practice. However, diversion is not the core of this proposal, it is about to make reading more effective. Additionally, ^{Alves (2014}) claims that diversion can be associated with engagement and motivation to learning, therefore the use of game design to try to become a reading activity funnier seemed successfully achieved in these gamified prototype’s tests.

Content analysis allowed to comprehend how the gamified tool influenced positively students along the use of the prototype. Some positive words/expressions were highlighted in verbalizations, as shown in figure 7:

These kind of utterances from participants’ evaluation were related to game elements, as missions, achievement, time, progression, map of adventure, feedback and also to the game experience itself. These game mechanics are the tools that yielded “meaningful responses (aesthetics)” (ZICHERMMAN; CUNINGHAN, 2011) from the students. Learners perceived themselves as motivated and engaged in the process, as seen in table 10:

Although students with dyslexia have impairments in reading (^{CARVALHAIS, 2010}), learners during this study showed to be perseverant in tasks and made effort to use organizational and memory skills when testing the prototype, which demonstrate their engagement in doing the missions and fulfil the whole narrative journey.

These tools offered by gamification make students “forwards and become more interested and stimulated to learn” (^{MUNTEAN, 2011}) that is, according to students’ perspectives, gamification turned reading more fun and engaging.

Both students declared they were very happy with the narrative itself because it was interesting and about Amazon legends, which helps to conclude that offer a story is one of most important aspects of a game design (^{DIANA; GOLFETTO; BALDESSAR; SPANHOL, 2014})

Additionally, teachers, as mediators and advisors in testing of the prototype, also made considerations as presented in table 11:

These utterances reveal teachers’ perspectives about two important points:

Hence, the primary game elements added to the prototype were able to work properly to increase student’s interest in the reading activity. Nonetheless, learner’s perception about the gamification needed to be more researched in order to help us to better understand the of the effect of game structures in motivation and engagement.

b) Contributions to the cognitive domain

When studying gamification, it is more common to research about the effective contributions to the affective domain; nevertheless, this strategy can also help in the process of learning. Therefore, as for the knowledge learning outcomes (^{SCHMITIZ et al, 2012}) results show that students perceived contributions to awareness about reading difficulties, as seen in table 12:

The teacher who worked directly with student 02 stated that the prototype helped with improvement of vocabulary, comprehension and decoding; nevertheless, it was found that learners’ difficulties were more visible to the teacher than to the students. On the other side, the teacher who guided the student 01 during the session perceived that she was able to talk about her difficulties with comprehension and punctation after accomplished the activity, as seen in table 13.

In sum, questionnaires and opened-interviews results converge to a comprehension about the potential of gamified reading to motivation, enjoyment and engagement, and learning outcomes as well. The participants’ agreeable responses to scales and statements in opened interviews provided little evidence that game mechanics applied to reading can provide better learning to students with dyslexia because of their engagement and interest in the whole process of being challenging and completing missions.

With regard with these two domains, it seems that they are connected, since motivation seems to be vital to the process of learning (SCHMITZ; KLEMKE; SPECHT, 2012), that is, enjoyment and motivation become a ground to learning, specifically in this scenario of special education with students who need to feel more interested and engaged in academic tasks.

Conclusions and Future Work

In this paper, the procedures and design framework of a gamified prototype were presented, and the applied game mechanics to a storytelling approach were described. Data was collected from interviews applied to students with dyslexia and their teachers after testing the prototype. The main findings answer our initial questions indicating that the game design elements applied to the prototype contributed to the motivation and engagement of the students and also provided indicators of learning outcomes. On this matter it is important to underline that it was not the purpose of this paper to discuss the learning outcomes or to explore what kind of extrinsic motivation the game mechanics applied to the gamified storytelling resource could be generated.

The main results show that the inclusion of game design elements provide more engagement and motivation, and contribute to students learn as well. Nonetheless, it is not intended to generalize these results, since they represent the perspectives of participants of a specific educational context.

From the findings of testing of the prototype, it can be concluded that missions, feedback, storytelling, game experience and time were the game design elements that seem to contribute more to motivation and engagement. Students perceived themselves as motivated and engaged in the process and showed to be perseverant in tasks and made effort to use organizational and memory skills when testing the prototype, which demonstrate their engagement in doing the missions and fulfil the whole narrative journey. Teachers’ perspectives show that these participants perceived more contributions on motivation and engagement than on reading learning. To offer a story seems to be one of most important dimensions to consider when designing a game and, according to students’ perspectives, the experience of using the prototype turned reading more fun and engaging.

In the future, further work should be done in order to provide more comprehensive data about the use of game mechanics, their function and contributions to cognitive learning. It would be interesting to better understand how the use of game mechanics in reading activities of poor readers could provide learning outcomes. Moreover, it would be important to conduct a study focusing on these students’ emotions when using gamified solutions at school.

Finally, it would be interesting to apply game mechanics of cooperation/collaboration, so that the prototype could storage the points and badges of the students and create a kind of leader board that could be used to verify the contribution of these elements to the motivation and engagement of pupils with dyslexic difficulties.