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Planning for success: how students use a grade prediction tool to win their classes

Published: 16 March 2015 Publication History

Abstract

Gameful course designs require a significant shift in approach for both students and instructors. Transforming a standard course into a good game involves fundamentally altering how the course functions, most notably by giving students greater control over their work. We have developed an application, GradeCraft, to support this shift in pedagogy. A key feature of the application is the Grade Predictor, where students can explore coursework options and plan pathways to success. We observed students in two gameful courses with differing designs using the Grade Predictor in similar ways: they spent similar amounts of time per session, increased usage when assignments were due and before making significant course decisions, predicted different types of assignments at different rates, and made more predictions in preparation for the end of semester. This study describes how students plan their coursework using the GradeCraft Grade Predictor tool.

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  • (2024)Flipped Classroom, Gamification and Game-Based Learning in the Traditional Classroom and in Non-Formal Education2024 47th MIPRO ICT and Electronics Convention (MIPRO)10.1109/MIPRO60963.2024.10569634(436-440)Online publication date: 20-May-2024
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  • (2022)Empirical Evidence on Gamification and Learning Analytics (GaLA): What is Missing?2022 International Conference on Advanced Learning Technologies (ICALT)10.1109/ICALT55010.2022.00040(106-108)Online publication date: Jul-2022
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      cover image ACM Other conferences
      LAK '15: Proceedings of the Fifth International Conference on Learning Analytics And Knowledge
      March 2015
      448 pages
      ISBN:9781450334174
      DOI:10.1145/2723576
      Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than the author(s) must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected].

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      New York, NY, United States

      Publication History

      Published: 16 March 2015

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      Author Tags

      1. design-research
      2. gameful instruction
      3. higher education
      4. learning analytics

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      LAK '15 Paper Acceptance Rate 20 of 74 submissions, 27%;
      Overall Acceptance Rate 236 of 782 submissions, 30%

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      View all
      • (2024)Flipped Classroom, Gamification and Game-Based Learning in the Traditional Classroom and in Non-Formal Education2024 47th MIPRO ICT and Electronics Convention (MIPRO)10.1109/MIPRO60963.2024.10569634(436-440)Online publication date: 20-May-2024
      • (2022)Managing Gamified Programming Courses with the FGPE PlatformInformation10.3390/info1302004513:2(45)Online publication date: 19-Jan-2022
      • (2022)Empirical Evidence on Gamification and Learning Analytics (GaLA): What is Missing?2022 International Conference on Advanced Learning Technologies (ICALT)10.1109/ICALT55010.2022.00040(106-108)Online publication date: Jul-2022
      • (2021)User-Centered Design for a Student-Facing Dashboard Grounded in Learning TheoryVisualizations and Dashboards for Learning Analytics10.1007/978-3-030-81222-5_9(191-212)Online publication date: 17-Dec-2021
      • (2020)Where is the Learning in Learning Analytics? A Systematic Literature Review on the Operationalization of Learning-Related Constructs in the Evaluation of Learning Analytics InterventionsIEEE Transactions on Learning Technologies10.1109/TLT.2020.299997013:3(631-645)Online publication date: 1-Jul-2020
      • (2018)Increasing Student Engagement Within the Core Nutritional Sciences Curriculum: A Gameful Learning ApproachPedagogy in Health Promotion10.1177/23733799188140225:4(268-275)Online publication date: 28-Nov-2018
      • (2018)Where Is the Learning in Learning Analytics?Lifelong Technology-Enhanced Learning10.1007/978-3-319-98572-5_7(88-100)Online publication date: 14-Aug-2018
      • (2018)Course-Specific Markovian Models for Grade PredictionAdvances in Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining10.1007/978-3-319-93037-4_3(29-41)Online publication date: 20-Jun-2018
      • (2017)Learning Analytics in Higher Education—A Literature ReviewLearning Analytics: Fundaments, Applications, and Trends10.1007/978-3-319-52977-6_1(1-23)Online publication date: 18-Feb-2017
      • (2016)Course periodic behavior modelling and its application in LMS activity prediction2016 IEEE Global Engineering Education Conference (EDUCON)10.1109/EDUCON.2016.7474703(1164-1174)Online publication date: Apr-2016
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