آموزش تحقیقات در عملیات برای دانشجویان دوره کارشناسی: نقش گیمیفیکیشن Teaching operations research to undergraduate management students: The role of gamification

1. Introduction Games have been a fundamental part of human civilization, and the first written history of human gameplays can be traced back more than three thousand years ago (McGonigal, 2011). In modern society a vast majority of the population is playing games, feeling rewarded by participating and taking action in games and feeding needs that real world is unable to satisfy (McGonigal, 2011; Reeves & Read, 2009). Everyone that has already played some game has felt the sense of being totally focused in something, engaged in every single moment, having a feeling of accomplishment and success (McGonigal, 2011; Reeves & Read, 2009; Yee, 2006). And if this passion is shared with many other people, games also give us the feeling of belonging to a community (McGonigal, 2011). Gamification is present in our daily lives, although sometimes we do not even recognize it. One of the most disseminated examples of the use of gamification with the objective of changing people’s habits is the Piano Staircase at the Odenplan subway in Stockholm. The main idea was to convince people to use the stairs instead of the escalator or elevator, and make the use of stairs a funny thing by turning it into a giant piano (TheFunTheory, 2009). Each step of the staircase would play a musical note when it was stepped on. Another example is Superbetter, aiming at helping people recover from an illness and achieving health goals by belonging to a community and playing a game (McGonigal, 2016). The badges that are given to acknowledge your achievements when you contribute with reviews in Tripadvisor are a tool to convince you to keep contributing with more and more reviews (staying enrolled in the game). Hundreds of millions of people play regularly online massive multiplayer games (Reeves & Read, 2009). About 67% of teenagers regularly play online games, and players aged 18 to 22 play on average around 25 h per week (Williams, Yee, & Caplan, 2008). Students that are now entering university are more and more acquainted with gaming experiences.