ENG 225 Rhetoric and Gaming

Rachels and Rockinson determine the effectiveness of an Spanish learning game Doulingo. The following is my annotation of their paper. This study seeks to compare a gamification app that provides Spanish language instruction called Duolingo and a traditional classroom environment in order to determine both method’s effectiveness at teaching elementary students spanish. By exposing two different groups of students to the different methods of spanish learning and then comparing the knowledge gained by the students through a test and learning scales, the study found there is no significant difference in the results of both learning processes. This led to the conclusion that Duolingo can be a useful tool in elementary level spanish acquisition, as it is effective as traditional face-to-face instruction. This study was performed at a private school in florida. It randomly assigned 2 third-grade classes and 3 fourth-grade foreign language classes to be taught spanish through duolingo inst...

Rabah and Cassidy perform a meta analysis of review literature on education in games. The following is my annotation of that paper. This study seeks to evaluate a broad variety of review literature on gamification in education in order to establish a consensus of the effectiveness of research in such a practice. In addition, it seeks to identify flaws or blind spots in the current research on the effectiveness of gamification. Gamification is defined as, “the use of game design elements characteristic for games (rather than play or playfulness) in non-game contexts”, or applying elements of video games to other situations, such as learning. It finds that gamification is a factor in many positive learning outcomes, such as lowering anxiety, boosting knowledge retention, and building communities. It also concludes that more research on the topic is needed, especially concerning how specific game mechanics connect to specific design principles. This study performed a qualitative a...

The purpose of this article, “Gamification in Stress Management Apps: A Critical App Review” , by Alexandra Hoffman, et all, was to discover how effective the gamification of mental health apps are. They found that the majority of mental health apps are not utilizing gamification to its full potential. There’s a chart that details their exact findings on page eight. Many apps did not include the basic gamification qualities: an avatar for example. Zero games had the ability to customize an avatar. Also, there’s a PDF link available on page 12 that shows the majority of apps had zero gamification qualities to them. The second-largest majority had only one or two gamification techniques.. Most apps don’t utilize gamification techniques as well as they could. This was a study done in Germany, although one of the requirements for the app was that they must be available in English. They reviewed sixty-two apps by downloading them and then seeing what they had to offer. Data was analyzed b...