A Proposal for Integrating Gamification into Task-Oriented Portfolio Assessment

Gamification is the application of game mechanics and concepts outside the context of games, although it can be ineffective when applied to education without properly implementing the core concepts of game-design into educational tasks themselves. Implementing gamification elements (such as points, badges and leaderboards) increases motivation and engagement with a system, however, this is hypothesised to be merely a novelty effect that shifts existing intrinsic motivations to extrinsic ones. Providing a context for this research is the Doubtfire Learning Management System (LMS), which implements task-oriented portfolio assessment and ideologies that parallel those of gamification via unit task design and encouraging a feedback loop to students. Upon extensive analysis of gamification literature, we propose how certain gamification components could be implemented into the LMS to increase student engagement and motivation further.