Game on: A future-proofing approach to programme redevelopment
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Prabhat Chand, Unitec Institute of Technology, Auckland
Email: pchand@unitec.ac.nz
Rob Moir, Unitec Institute of Technology, Auckland
Email: rmoir@unitec.ac.nz
David Clarke, Unitec Institute of Technology, Auckland
Email: dclarke@unitec.ac.nz
Mary Panko, Unitec Institute of Technology, Auckland
Email: mpanko@unitec.ac.nz
Faced with over 100 New Zealand Qualification Authority (NZQA) unit standards available in random order to enrolled apprentices, with each one essential for successful completion of an automotive programme, a team of three lecturers decided to investigate a more flexible approach to the enrolment, delivery and assessment of their students’ work. Initially they investigated the options provided by electronic portfolios but rapidly concluded that while this might improve the assessment side of the picture, it would not help to clarify the path that a student needed to know before enrolling in any new Unit. They then turned to the concept of gamification, where a student could see what elements he or she had already gained across the entire playing field, either in whole or in part, and be motivated to make the next and most suitable move. Increased ease of use of the various information systems was seen to create value for both learners and teachers and although progress towards true gamification is still continuing, this paper examines the benefits that their new approach has brought to the programme as a whole. In particular, it highlights aspects of increased constructivism, collaboration and a more holistic view of students’ learning. It also considers the barriers that have so far prevented gamification being developed in the manner intended and looks towards future opportunities.
Keywords : Gamification, holistic curriculum design
This paper examines the issue and possibilities which emerged when a convoluted programme was considered for a transformational change via the application of gamification. Although the end-point has not yet been achieved in terms of game development, a wide range of curriculum design improvements have resulted from this process. It should be noted that an investigation into technology teaching in Australia (Johnson et al,
2014) suggests that the development of gamification projects normally has a two to three year adoption horizon. In the light of this, the paper reflects upon the journey so far and suggests future steps. modified at some point in the future when the
Targeted Review of Qualifications (TRoQ) is completed for this area of study but in the meantime students and their teachers are left to struggle through a maze of unit standards and requirements.
According to a Ministry of Education publication
(Mahoney, 2015), most people who qualify for a trade do so via the industry training system, in an in-work and off-job training arrangement organised through an industry training organisation (ITO).
Some polytechnics and institutes of technology
(ITPs) also offer workplace-based training leading to qualifications that are the same as those offered through ITOs. These ITP programmes are often referred to as 'Managed Apprenticeships'.
The National Certificate in Motor Industry
(Automotive Engineering) or (Automotive Electrical
Engineering) is the programme that most apprentices starting on a career in the motor industry have enrolled into over the last few years.
Both versions of this programme are likely to be
At present approximately 57 units of study (per qualification) are compulsorily required before the
Level-3 National Certificate in Motor Industry can be achieved, with an additional 42 Units total offered as elective units. Each has its own performance criteria (although many overlap) and every one has to be enrolled in individually and
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Chand, P., Moir, R., Clarke, D. & Panko, M. (2016). Game on: A future-proofing approach to programme redevelopment. In H. Hamerton
& C. Fraser (Eds.), Te tipuranga – Growing capability: Proceedings of the 2015 National Tertiary Learning and Teaching Conference (pp. 77-
82). Tauranga, New Zealand: Bay of Plenty Polytechnic.
Proceedings of the 2015 National Tertiary Learning and Teaching Conference
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Prabhat Chand, Rob Moir, David Clarke and Mary Panko assessed independently of the others. This means that frequently students, teachers and assessing employers may be confused about the point that an apprentice has reached within the system. The problem is further exacerbated by the fact that students are able to work through the units in any order in order to gain their certificate.
According to the NZQA’s website (NZQA, 2015):
The title of a unit standard expresses the main outcome that someone who is credited with the Unit
Standard has demonstrated they know and/or can do.
Each outcome statements describes the more detailed outcomes that learners’ knowledge and skills are assessed against. Collectively, these comprise the outcome expressed by the title. In order to be credited with the unit standard, a learner must achieve all of the outcomes described in the outcome statements.
Evidence requirements specify the critical evidence required to meet the outcomes. Collectively, evidence requirements provide the standards against which outcomes are assessed.
When the programme was first designed, it was anticipated that apprentices would be closely involved with their training organisations – be they the Motor Industry Training Organisation (MITO) or a tertiary training institution such as Unitec
Institute of Technology. They would be closely guided along their path of learning, provided with suitable handouts and worksheets and assessed on a regular basis - at which point records would be maintained by hand. This level of maintenance was expected to extend to a close watch over their enrolments into each unit standard.
However, times have changed, and now the majority of students are working more independently, accessing the information they require online and expecting assessments to be equally mobile. While some of this has happened successfully, the confusion over which units they still require and which have been completed has not been resolved. In addition, the numbers of students currently enrolled into the certificate, approximately 160 at present, necessitate greater efficiencies in administration and delivery.
Faced with these difficulties, which appeared designed to encourage students to drop out of the programme before completion, a team of three lecturers at Unitec decided to investigate a more flexible approach to the enrolment, delivery and assessment of their students’ work. The goal of the authors of this paper was to simplify the procedure for both students and staff and make the development of their qualification a more motivating process.
Te Tipuranga – Growing Capability
The route they took started with a consideration of the assessment regime. They initially examined the possibility of creating a portfolio of evidence-based assessment so that duplicated performances could be cross-referenced and the student would have a visible record of his or her own achievements for any potential employers to look at. The role of portfolio-based assessment is not new but has been relatively little used in the vocational education sector (Sluijsmans, Straetmans, & van Merriënboer,
2008).
Although this idea had several merits, it became quickly apparent that it would not solve the many layers of complexity that were inherent within the organisation and administration of the programme although the development of a portfolio might encourage learners to complete individual unit standards. The next step led them to consider the potential that gamification might offer to the future value of their automotive programme by offering a more motivating, constructivist and potentially collaborative learning environment.
Gamification
According to Werbach and Hunter (2015) gamification is the application of digital game design techniques to non-game contexts, such as business and education. The core concept is that game mechanics can be applied outside the environment of games themselves to create engaging experiences as well as to assign rewards and recognition. It is designed to increase user participation in learning activities and enhance the desire to undertake problem solving – in order to win the challenge being set. This extension of understanding, building on the knowledge already possessed by a participant, is at the heart of the learning theory know as constructivism.
Gamification guru, Yu-kai Chou defines gamification as “…the craft of deriving all the fun and addicting elements found in games and applying them to realworld or productive activities”, while Ray Wang,
CEO & Principal Analyst of Constellation Research,
Inc., describes it as a “…series of design principles, processes and systems used to influence, engage and motivate individuals, groups and communities to drive behaviours and effect desired outcomes.”
(as cited in Huang & Soman, 2013, p.6).
At a psychological level Werbach and Hunter (2015) consider that gaming taps into people’s natural desire to compete and play, and results in high levels of engagement. Allied with these motivational advantages gamification techniques also can be designed to encourage collaborative learning, in situations where games or aspects of
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Game on: A future-proofing approach to programme redevelopment their completion require cooperation from others in the team.
The significant advantage of this model to the
National Certificate in Motor Industry programme is two-fold. Firstly, that it should readily allow the participant to see where they lie on the completion pathway, an inherent difficulty with the current arrangement. Secondly, that students are challenged to tackle increasingly complex situations in a competitive but collaborative environment and learn through their own mistakes (Huang & Soman,
2013, p.12). game (Laal & Laal, 2012). Like constructivism, it has both its adherents and its critics and has become prominent within many online learning scenarios
(Roberts, 2004). Although not an essential component of any gamification project, as learners can easily work independently, it does offer the opportunity to develop group activities and is able to provide the potential for team building that most modern workforces require.
Having the option to game singly or in groups also offers variety of instructional approach and can stimulate learners’ competitive aspects, thereby increasing motivation.
Constructivism
Constructivism as learning and teaching philosophy was developed during the 20th Century as an antidote to ‘teacher-talk’ instruction, and emphasised the value of incorporating new experiences into a pre-existing conceptual framework. Its early advocates, such as Vygotsky
(1978), saw learner responsibility taking centre stage with the teacher becoming the ‘guide-on-theside’. Constructivist teaching is based on the belief that learning occurs as learners are actively involved in a process of meaning and knowledge construction as opposed to passively receiving information. Learners are the makers of meaning and knowledge.
Constructivism focuses on the learner
‘constructing’ their own knowledge out of their particular experiences of learning. Following the findings of Jonassen (2000) it has been shown that this process is accelerated by increasing the engagement of the student through activity-based learning.
Gamification sits comfortably within these educational concepts as in this form of active learning the learner is provided with carefully structured tasks which motivate him or her to continue to expand their knowledge. According to von Glasersfeld (1989) sustaining motivation to learn is strongly dependent on the learner’s confidence in his or her potential for learning.
These feelings of competence and belief in potential to solve new problems are derived from first-hand experience as provided by the steps within the games. These experiences can be theoretical or practical and can contribute to assessment requirements.
Collaborative learning
Collaborative learning involves educational approaches to teaching and learning where groups of students are required to work together to solve a problem, complete a task or, as in the present context, collectively accomplish a stage within a
The research for this paper was undertaken via a qualitative participatory approach, and data was gathered in three main ways (Bleicher, 2013).
Firstly, it was obtained informally during regular weekly meetings of the research team who were also the lecturers involved in programme delivery, throughout the course of a year. Secondly, all three lecturers were interviewed about their views on the issues involved, the outcomes desired and the phase of development which they believed had actually been achieved. Lastly, the group analysed the fundamental issues as they saw them and then set goals that they intended the curriculum design changes to remedy.
Analysis by the researchers at the beginning of this process revealed the following general issues:
• The qualification comprised many unit standards;
• The material was static and one dimensional;
• All information was paper-based;
• Record-keeping was heavy on administration and management;
• Rigid processes and systems made it difficult to maintain communication between lecturers and students, and;
• The overall programme was too complicated for students to be in control or to act in a selfdirected manner.
The lecturers decided that in response to these issues, improvements could be introduced as a series of steps, addressing aspects that could be improved prior to the implementation of actual gamification. These focussed on online enrolments to decrease waiting time for would-be students and a web-based tracking system to address organisational problems.
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Prabhat Chand, Rob Moir, David Clarke and Mary Panko
The prime change undertaken coordinated students’ information into a single e-report to simplify enrolment. The web-based programme now allows a blending of reports from multiple sources such as transcripts from PeopleSoft, a qualification check from the NZQA, as well as cross credits from our local Certificate in Applied
Technology, other ITPs and overseas qualifications.
This paperless system has improved the efficiency and accuracy of the enrolment process.
Secondly, all teaching and learning materials, student evaluations, and formative assessments are now online via Moodle. This allows extended opportunities for interactions between students and teachers through a variety of systems such as online forums, Kahoots or Echo360 when video is required. Since the materials are already available on-line, the next phase will require us to make the contents freely available irrespective of students’ enrolment status on the courses. Students will be enrolled (charged tuition fee) to attend scheduled timetabled classes, learning support and assessments. It is expected that the unbundling of teaching and learning resources will provide more benefit to distance education type initiatives such as current ‘Managed Apprenticeships’ and ‘Work
Integrated Learning’.
The lecturer (PC) leading the research explained that these changes had only been possible with the help of their computer technician who developed an access database where he could combined all these reports into a single report.
These are the units the students have done, the units he needs to enrol in, the units he gets cross credited, the units he gets from NZQA. It comes in a single report, in a single page report. So it helped us on enrolment night. It wasn’t perfect, but it really helped.
(PC)
At present this database is restricted to staff and administration but it is anticipated that shortly this record will be accessible to all students, “ but hopefully this project will make it so simple they can see on their mobile phone what units they have to do, when it’s going to happen, they have all that information and they can then make a decision to enrol.” (PC)
A second researcher (RM) explained that working on and under cars was a dirty and restricted environment, little suiting the use of laptop computers but ideal for working with a mobile phone:
We’ve been trying to get them to take photographs of their practical work for evidence. So a means of using
Te Tipuranga – Growing Capability
80 a tablet or a cell phone to capture that data and work in a shell game type environment seemed to be a smart way to go. (RM)
RM went on to explain the way in which the gamification project, although still under development, had already led to procedural improvements:
I think probably by looking at the gamification we’ve realised that we need to allow the students to have access to this data which is what we are actually currently working on right at this moment. But when we did the enrolments at the beginning of this year we had sheets, reports printed out from the database with individual student data of what they had achieved, what they had left to achieve. So just that in itself made it easier and I think it was better for the students to be able to look at some pieces of paper and see exactly where they were. (RM)
The third member of the research team (DC), who was the only one directly teaching the students, described the way in which their review of the
National Certificate in Motor Industry during this project had allowed them to develop a more holistic approach to learning and assessment across the overall programme.
The unit standards tend to be very prescriptive so you are almost teaching to the unit standard and teaching to the assessment material which isn’t really necessarily giving the student enough scope to have deep learning take place. So what I have been practicing is some of those [holistic] methodologies in the actual classroom with industry-based students, … to give you an example, the unit standard is written in such a way that if you had a diagram you could quite easily look at the diagram and work out what it was, have a question asked from it but your answer may be incorrect because it hasn’t stated exactly the requirements of the unit standard. However the answer that was given by the student is actually correct in a different context. So what I’ve been trying to do is look at different contexts and then steer them to the way that it needs to be put together as far as the unit standard is concerned. (DC)
The lecturer went on to explain that the new approach to teaching also encouraged students to use collaborative and constructivist learning techniques:
We share some best practices, things that have happened in that particular day or someone’s had a problem and we can use the pool of knowledge within the context of the students and try and overcome that particular type of problem. .. [Learning has become] a more freer open forum. (DC)
At the end of the first year the researchers summarised their achievements (Table 1).

Game on: A future-proofing approach to programme redevelopment
Table 1: Programme improvements currently achieved
Phase 1 Development achieved to date
Potential web based report and tracking system for students, staff and admin access.
Providing:

E-centred

24/7 access

Reduced paper records


Minimised administration input

Personalised access
Enhanced student engagement and interaction
 Meets living curriculum principles

Cost efficient use of resources

Supports work based and decentralised learning

Improved success and retention

Potential employer and third party stake holder access

Improved administration accessibility
Desired Outcome

Dynamic


Interactive

Personalised
On-line
 Safe, private and secure

Flexible

MOOCs
Stumbling-blocks
The essential difficulty associated with this project has been a lack of professional IT support.
Gamification uses cutting edge technology and even though in the last few months apps are being developed almost daily to enable ‘simple’ gametype programmes to be constructed, these still take time and expertise in the field of computer technology. finally activated, the principles of interactive learning and teaching as demonstrated through the
Living Curriculum such as such as conversation, enquiry, collaboration and autonomy will be greatly enhanced throughout this programme.
Additionally, it is anticipated that an app dedicated for personalised online study plans and timetables will shortly become available for students to access via their personal mobile devices.
Advances
Over the last few years Unitec has been attempting to transform its teaching and learning into a more collaborative and engaging form. This development, known as the Living Curriculum
(Pachler, Bachmair, & Cook, 2010) has involved a series of characteristics, like integrating study more closely with work, blending face-to-face learning with web-based learning and providing a more motivational learning experience.
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These features are reflected in the changes which have happened in the delivery and organisation of
The National Certificate in Motor Industry, both through the changes that have happened in the classroom and the move towards student ownership via the new database.
Johnson, L., Adams-Becker, S., Cummins, M. &
Estrada, V. (2014). 2014 NMC technology outlook for Australian tertiary education: A horizon project regional report . Austin, TX: The
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A proportion of the problems identified at the beginning of this research have been addressed by transformations to the programme’s enrolment and delivery mechanisms. Less has so far been achieved in the initial target of gamification or even in the development of e-Portfolio assessment, but
It is hoped that when the process of gamification is
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