Ms. Annique Smith, lecturer and program coordinator for BIS Multimedia, presented at the GamiFIN 2022 Conference. This conference was hosted by the Gamification Group at Tampere University.

Ms. Smith presented along Nikoletta Zampeta Legaki and Juho Hamari from the Gamification Group at Tampere University on a conference paper titled Games and gamification in flipped classrooms: a systematic review. The abstract reads as follows:

The landscape of education is experiencing a shift towards active learning approaches as the need for independent, lifelong learning increases. Traditional lecture-based teaching methodologies are not as effective at keeping students motivated enough to engage with content on a deep level. Therefore, approaches such as student-centred learning, self-directed learning, and flipped classrooms are becoming more popular as educators begin to embrace the idea of giving students more autonomy in the classroom. The popularity of gamification and games in education has led to them being used in conjunction with these active learning methods, however this area lacks a high-level view of present and future work. This study aims to bring clarity to this area of education by presenting a systematic review of the use of games and gamification in flipped classrooms. In general, the results show that current implementations have had positive outcomes, especially in terms of academic performance. The data also shows that the in-class component of flipped classrooms is more commonly gamified compared to the out-of-class component, and that achievement affordances and Kahoot! are popular motivational affordances to use. Further research is proposed concerning social affordances and increased reliance on theoretical foundations.

Ms. Smith also presented a poster titled Awareness-raising of societal challenges via gamification along with Nikoletta Zampeta Legaki, Daniel Fernandez Galeote, Prajwal D’Souza, Ferran Altarriba Bertran and Juho Hamari. The abstract reads as follows:

While gamification gains popularity, it has also received criticism for the plain use of game elements. In this workshop, we followed a participatory design approach to shape new gameful experiences, which are reflected in pictures and ideas from the participants, to raise awareness of current societal challenges. Our findings support involving physical or not commonly used game elements, and support user agency. Keywords Gamification, Participatory Design, Public Understanding of Science, Societal Challenges.