Effectiveness of Gamified Cooperation and Competition Strategies in a Blended Learning Environment for Developing EFL Business Writing Skills for TVET Learners
Keywords:
Gamification, gamified cooperation, gamified competition, gamified blended learning, Business Writing, Technical and Vocational Training and Education
Abstract
This research investigated the effectiveness of gamified blended learning environments in fostering EFL writing skills among technical and vocational education and training (TVET) trainees in Saudi Arabia. It compared three distinct learning strategies achieved through gamification design in a blended delivery mode: gamified cooperation, gamified competition, and gamified cooperation-competition. Each strategy leveraged a specific category of gamification features that evoke different goal structures: cooperation, competition, or a combination of both. A quasi-experimental design with a pre-test and post-test was employed. Forty-five trainees were purposively selected and randomly assigned to three groups, each receiving instruction using a different gamified blended learning program for teaching business writing. The findings revealed significant improvement in English as a Foreign language business writing skills for all three groups. However, a one-way ANOVA and post-hoc Tukey HSD test indicated that the gamified cooperation-competition strategy yielded the greatest improvement compared to the gamified cooperation and gamified competition strategies alone. This suggests that a combination of cooperative and competitive elements within a gamified blended learning environment might be the most effective approach for enhancing English as a Foreign language business writing skills among Technical and Vocational Training and Education learners.
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References
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23. Walters, M., Hunter, S., & Giddens, E. (2007). Qualitative Research on What Leads to Success in Professional Writing. International Journal for the Scholarship of Teaching and learning, 1(2), n2.
24. Wolf, T., Jahn, S., Hammerschmidt, M., & Weiger, W. H. (2021). Competition versus cooperation: How technology-facilitated social interdependence initiates the self-improvement chain. International Journal of Research in Marketing, 38(2), 472-491.
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26. Thomas, C., & Berkling, K. (2013, September). Redesign of a gamified software engineering course. In 2013 International Conference on Interactive Collaborative Learning (ICL) (pp. 778-786). IEEE.
27. Mekler, E. D., Bruhlmann, F., Opwis, K., & Tuch, A. N. (2013, October). Do points, levels and leaderboards harm intrinsic motivation? An empirical analysis of common gamification elements. In Proceedings of the First International Conference on gameful design, research, and applications (pp. 66-73). http://doi.org/10.1145/2583008.2583017
28. Chen, Y., & Pu, P. (2014, April). Healthy Together: exploring social incentives for mobile fitness applications. In Proceedings of the second international symposium of Chinese chi (pp. 25-34). http://doi.org/10.1145/2592235.2592240
29. Knutas, A., Ikonen, J., Nikula, U., & Porras, J. (2014, June). Increasing collaborative communications in a programming course with gamification: a case study. In Proceedings of the 15th International Conference on Computer Systems and Technologies (pp. 370-377).
30. Morschheuser, B., Maedche, A., & Walter, D. (2017, February). Designing cooperative gamification: Conceptualization and prototypical implementation. In Proceedings of the 2017 ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing (pp. 2410-2421).
2. Deterding, S., Dixon, D., Khaled, R. & Nacke, L. (2011). From game design elements to gamefulness: defining gamification. In Proceedings of the 15th International Academic MindTrek Conference: Envisioning Future Media Environments (pp. 9–15).
3. Hamari, J. (2013). Transforming homo economicus into homo ludens: A field experiment on gamification in a utilitarian peer-to-peer trading service. Electronic commerce research and applications, 12(4), 236-245. http://doi.org/10.1016/j.elerap.2013.01.004.
4. Ho, J. C. S., Hung, Y. S., & Kwan, L. Y. Y. (2022). The impact of peer competition and collaboration on gamified learning performance in educational settings: a Meta-analytical study. Education and Information Technologies, 1-34.
5. Johnson, D. W. (2003). Social interdependence: interrelationships among theory, research, and practice. American psychologist, 58(11), 934-945. http://doi.org/10.1037/0003-066X.58.11.934
6. Knutas, A., Van Roy, R., Hynninen, T., Granato, M., Kasurinen, J., & Ikonen, J. (2019). A process for designing algorithm-based personalized gamification. Multimedia Tools and Applications, 78, 13593-13612.
7. Lee, T. Y., Dugan, C., Geyer, W., Ratchford, T., Rasmussen, J., Shami, N. S., & Lupushor, S. (2013, June). Experiments on motivational feedback for crowdsourced workers. In Seventh International AAAI Conference on Weblogs and Social Media, 341–350.
8. Ledford, D. (2019). Thinking outside the Toolbox: A Teaching Resource for Vocational Writing.
9. Locke, E. A., & Latham, G. P. (1990). A theory of goal setting & task performance. Prentice-Hall, Inc.
10. Lui, S. (2013). Use of Gamification in Vocabulary Learning: A Case Study in Macau. CELC Symposium, 90–97. Retrieved May 28, 2024, from https://www.nus.edu.sg/celc/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/13.-Sze-Lui.pdf
11. Malas, R. I., & Hamtini, T. M. (2016). A gamified e-learning design model to promote and improve learning. International Review on Computers and Software, 11(1), 8-19.
12. Massung, E., Coyle, D., Cater, K. F., Jay, M., & Preist, C. (2013, April). Using crowdsourcing to support pro-environmental community activism. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on human factors in Computing systems (pp. 371-380). http://doi.org/10.1145/2470654.2470708
13. Morschheuser, B., Hamari, J., & Maedche, A. (2019). Cooperation or competition–When do people contribute more? A field experiment on gamification of crowdsourcing. International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, 127, 7-24. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijhcs.2018.10.001.
14. Morschheuser, B., Maedche, A., & Walter, M. (2017). Gamification design patterns for information systems. Electronic Markets, 27(3), 325-343.
15. National Commission on Writing (2004). Writing: A ticket to work… or a ticket out. College Entrance Examination Board. Retrieved May 2, 2023, from https://www.nwp.org/cs/public/download/nwp_file/21479/writing-ticket-to-work.pdf?x-r=pcfile_d
16. Ha, T. Y. N., Nguyen, T. B. N., Nguyen, N. L. D., & Tran, T. N. (2022). The Effects of Collaborative Learning on Young ESL Learners’ L2 Anxiety and Speaking Performance. International Journal of Asian Education, 3(2), 125-137.
17. Plass, J. L., O'Keefe, P. A., Homer, B. D., Case, J., Hayward, E. O., Stein, M., & Perlin, K. (2013). The impact of individual, competitive, and collaborative mathematics game play on learning, performance, and motivation. Journal of educational psychology, 105(4), 1050.
18. Pratiwi, Y. E., Rukmini, D., & Faridi, A. (2017). The linguistic problems of students’ competence in writing business letters. Journal of Language and Literature, 11(2), 117-126.
19. Rapp, A., Hopfgartner, F., Hamari, J., Linehan, C., & Cena, F. (2019). Strengthening gamification studies: Current trends and future opportunities of gamification research. International Journal of Human-Computer Studies. 10.1016/j.ijhcs.2018.11.007.
20. Riar, M., Morschheuser, B., Zarnekow, R., & Hamari, J. (2022). Gamification of cooperation: A framework, literature review and future research agenda. International Journal of Information Management, 67, 102549.
21. Sadeghi, K., Sağlık, E., Mede, E., Samur, Y., & Comert, Z. (2022). The effects of implementing gamified instruction on vocabulary gain and motivation among language learners. Heliyon, 8(11).
22. Sailer, M., & Homner, L. (2020). The gamification of learning: A meta-analysis. Educational Psychology Review, 32(1), 77-112.
23. Walters, M., Hunter, S., & Giddens, E. (2007). Qualitative Research on What Leads to Success in Professional Writing. International Journal for the Scholarship of Teaching and learning, 1(2), n2.
24. Wolf, T., Jahn, S., Hammerschmidt, M., & Weiger, W. H. (2021). Competition versus cooperation: How technology-facilitated social interdependence initiates the self-improvement chain. International Journal of Research in Marketing, 38(2), 472-491.
25. World Bank. (2018). World development report 2019: The changing nature of work. The World Bank.
26. Thomas, C., & Berkling, K. (2013, September). Redesign of a gamified software engineering course. In 2013 International Conference on Interactive Collaborative Learning (ICL) (pp. 778-786). IEEE.
27. Mekler, E. D., Bruhlmann, F., Opwis, K., & Tuch, A. N. (2013, October). Do points, levels and leaderboards harm intrinsic motivation? An empirical analysis of common gamification elements. In Proceedings of the First International Conference on gameful design, research, and applications (pp. 66-73). http://doi.org/10.1145/2583008.2583017
28. Chen, Y., & Pu, P. (2014, April). Healthy Together: exploring social incentives for mobile fitness applications. In Proceedings of the second international symposium of Chinese chi (pp. 25-34). http://doi.org/10.1145/2592235.2592240
29. Knutas, A., Ikonen, J., Nikula, U., & Porras, J. (2014, June). Increasing collaborative communications in a programming course with gamification: a case study. In Proceedings of the 15th International Conference on Computer Systems and Technologies (pp. 370-377).
30. Morschheuser, B., Maedche, A., & Walter, D. (2017, February). Designing cooperative gamification: Conceptualization and prototypical implementation. In Proceedings of the 2017 ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing (pp. 2410-2421).
Published
2024-06-10
How to Cite
Mohamed, K. A., El-Naggar, M. E., & Alazab, G. S. (2024). Effectiveness of Gamified Cooperation and Competition Strategies in a Blended Learning Environment for Developing EFL Business Writing Skills for TVET Learners. European Scientific Journal, ESJ, 30, 107. Retrieved from https://eujournal.org/index.php/esj/article/view/18236
Section
ESI Preprints
Copyright (c) 2024 Khalid A. Mohamed, Mohamad Elsayed El-Naggar, Gehan Sedky Alazab
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
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