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A Serious Game for Students to Acquire Productivity Habits

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Games and Learning Alliance (GALA 2020)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNISA,volume 12517))

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Abstract

In recent years there has been an increasing shift from traditional work to knowledge work. Students are not always well prepared for such a work mode and struggle with time and energy management, leading to stress and long unhealthy study sessions. There are many applications aimed at developing productivity habits. A few of them are somewhat gamified, although they are especially focused on real-world to-do lists, lacking a strong narrative and appeal, especially to students. We present the serious game BusyBusy, specifically designed for college students. The game revolves around the capture and reflection steps of David Allen’s Getting Things Done methodology. By simulating aspects of student life, BusyBusy facilitates students to practice capturing action-related thoughts in their real life and reflect upon study activity choices in an entertaining and engaging environment.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    http://www.dumbwaystodie.com/.

  2. 2.

    https://gettingthingsdone.com/.

  3. 3.

    Freely available at https://busy-busy.netlify.com/.

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Acknowledgment

We thank David Allen and Arjan Broere for their support, enthusiasm and inspiring comments throughout this project.

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Correspondence to Rafael Bidarra .

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Appendices

Appendix A Survey Short Term Study

(Introduction) Thank you for taking the time to participate in this study measuring awareness and valuation of the capturing habit. The capturing habit is introduced by David Allen in his work Getting Things Done®. It refers to the habit of capturing your thoughts related to actions (such as buy milk, call a friend, study a chapter for a course) in a medium outside of your head. The survey contains 5 multiple choice questions and should take 2 min to complete. Your response will be completely anonymous.

(Q1) How familiar are you with the capturing principle?

(Q2) Where do you capture your thoughts?

(Q3) How often do you currently capture your thoughts, related to an action, outside of your head?

(Q4) How valuable is it for you to capture your thoughts outside of your head?

(Q5) How aware are you of the value of capturing thoughts outside of your head?

Appendix B Survey Before Long Term Study

(Introduction) Thank you for taking the time to participate in this study measuring awareness and valuation of the capturing habit. The capturing habit is introduced by David Allen in his work Getting Things Done. It refers to the habit of capturing your thoughts related to actions (which take more than say 2 min, such as buy milk, call a friend, study a chapter for a course) in a medium outside of your head.

(Q1) How familiar are you with the capturing principle?

(Q2) How often do you currently capture your thoughts, related to an action, outside of your head?

(Q3) How often would you like to capture your thoughts, related to an action, outside of your head?

(Q4) Where do you capture your thoughts?

(Q5) How valuable is it for you to capture your thoughts outside of your head?

Appendix C Survey After Long Term Study

(Introduction) Thank you for taking the time to participate in this study measuring awareness and valuation of the capturing habit. This is the final step of the experiment, hope you enjoyed it :)

(Q1) How familiar are you with the capturing principle?

(Q2) How often do you currently capture your thoughts, related to an action, outside of your head?

(Q3) How often would you like to capture your thoughts, related to an action, outside of your head?

(Q4) Where do you capture your thoughts?

(Q5) How valuable is it for you to capture your thoughts outside of your head?

(Q6) Has playing the game helped you capture your own thoughts externally?

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Raateland, W. et al. (2020). A Serious Game for Students to Acquire Productivity Habits. In: Marfisi-Schottman, I., Bellotti, F., Hamon, L., Klemke, R. (eds) Games and Learning Alliance. GALA 2020. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 12517. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-63464-3_32

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-63464-3_32

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-63463-6

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-63464-3

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