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.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
- 1.
- 2.
- 3.
Freely available at https://busy-busy.netlify.com/.
References
Allen, D.: Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity. Penguin, New York (2001)
Bada, S.O., Olusegun, S.: Constructivism learning theory: a paradigm for teaching and learning. J. Res. Method Educ. 5(6), 66–70 (2015)
Clark, A., Chalmers, D.: The extended mind. Analysis 58, 1 (1998)
Czerwinski, M., Horvitz, E., Wilhite, S.: A diary study of task switching and interruptions. In: Conference on Human factors in Computing Systems (SIGCHI) (2004)
Driscoll, M.P.: Psychology of Learning. Allyn and Bacon, Boston (2000)
Duffy, T.M., Bednar, A.K.: Attempting to come to grips with alternative perspectives. Educ. Technol. 31(9), 12–15 (1991)
Evans, W., Kelly, B.: Pre-registration diploma student nurse stress and coping measures. Nurse Educ. Today 24(6), 473–482 (2004)
HabitRPG Inc: Habitica (2020). nirvanahq.com. Accessed 05 July 2020
Heylighen, F., Vidal, C.: Getting things done: the science behind stress-free productivity. Long Range Plan. 41(6), 585–605 (2008)
Jin, P.: Efficacy of tai chi, brisk walking, meditation, and reading in reducing mental and emotional stress. J. Psychosom. Res. 36(4), 361–370 (1992)
Lopes, R., Eisemann, E., Bidarra, R.: Authoring adaptive game world generation. IEEE Trans. Games 10(1), 42–55 (2018)
Stults-Kolehmainen, M., Sinha, R.: The effects of stress on physical activity and exercise. Sports Med. 44(1), 81–121 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40279-013-0090-5
Murphy, R.J., Gray, S.A., Sterling, G., Reeves, K., DuCette, J.: A comparative study of professional student stress. J. Dent. Educ. 73(3), 328–337 (2009)
Nirvanahq Inc: Nirvana for GTD (2020). nirvanahq.com. Accessed 05 July 2020
nTask: nTask (2020). ntaskmanager.com. Accessed 05 July 2020
Raelin, J.A.: Work-based (not classroom) learning as the apt preparation for the practice of management. Manag. Teach. Rev. 1(1), 43–51 (2016)
Raelin, J.A.: Work-based (not classroom) learning as the apt preparation for the practice of management. Manag. Teach. Rev. 1(1), 43–51 (2016)
Solomon, L.J., Rothblum, E.D.: Academic procrastination: frequency and cognitive-behavioral correlates. J. Couns. Psychol. 31(4), 503 (1984)
SuperBetter, LLC: SuperBetter (2020). superbetter.com Accessed 05 July 2020
Tice, D.M., Baumeister, R.F.: Longitudinal study of procrastination, performance, stress, and health: the costs and benefits of dawdling. Psychol. Sci. 8(6), 454–458 (1997)
Acknowledgment
We thank David Allen and Arjan Broere for their support, enthusiasm and inspiring comments throughout this project.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
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?
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2020 Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this paper
Cite this paper
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
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-63464-3_32
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-63463-6
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-63464-3
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)