Sandra Gama (INESC-ID, IST)
Title: Improving Teaching and Learning through Gamification

Abstract: Gamification consists of applying game mechanics to non-gaming contexts. Leveraging the potential of gamification in a variety of settings (including education!), we decided to gamify an engineering course at DEI. For more than ten years, different strategies and mechanisms have been implemented to improve teaching and learning processes. Interdisciplinary synergies have been established in the context of a national-funded (FCT) project to elevate game mechanics and lead to relevant outcomes, both in academic and scientific terms. With the data obtained from our long-time research, we are now able to use machine-learning techniques to predict student success within the first weeks of the semester. This information, based on student behavior, provides educators with invaluable information on how to adapt strategies in current or subsequent instances of the course. In addition, we have witnessed noteworthy improvements in student engagement and fun while taking the course, which promotes the whole learning process. This talk will describe the gamification process and its adjustments over the years while covering the underlying human factors which have made it succeed.

Bio: Sandra Gama graduated in Computer Engineering from Instituto Superior Técnico and continued her MSc. and Ph.D. studies at the same institution, where she has been an Invited Assistant Professor since 2016, at the DEI department. She is also an Adjunct Professor at Instituto Superior de Tecnologias Avançadas. In addition to her teaching activities, she is a Senior Researcher at the Graphics and Interaction group of INESC-ID (Lisboa). Her main areas of research focus on User Interfaces and their Personalization via Information Visualization and Digital Gamification of Education. In this context, she has led a national project and published several articles in international conferences, as well as in journals of the area.