RESEARCH PROPOSAL: EFFICACY OF GAMIFICATION IN DEVELOPING AN

AUTOTELIC MENTALITY

Research Proposal
Efficacy of Gamification in Developing an Autotelic Mentality
Sonya Breaux
Kennesaw State University

Author Note
This paper was prepared for EDRS 8900 Applied Field Research
Taught by Dr. Cutts

RESEARCH PROPOSAL: EFFICACY OF GAMIFICATION IN DEVELOPING AN

AUTOTELIC MENTALITY

Introduction
Today, the concept of gamification is playing an important role in our society. Why? Just
take a moment and look around. The first reason is that we are surrounded by technology that
allows us to have contact with the rest of the world in the blink of an eye, and second is that the
same technology has led us to compete against one another.
Over 5 million people spend an average of 45 hours a week playing games, and worldwide, we play 3 billion hours a week of video and computer games. (Knewton, 2014). The use of
logical skills, game mechanics, and external information to engage users and solve real problems
is the base of this concept. (Kim, 1999). Kim discusses gamification as the design of the player's
journey where the player improves over time, giving him or her something to master and build
on emotional engagement. In the same light, gamification in the classroom setting might allow
students to become the masters of their own studies and engage more fully in their educational
experience.
Orientation topic
Recently, businessmen and teachers have expressed the importance of keeping students
engaged in double win-win situations. Numerous people are convinced that it is in school where
students develop a self-driven mentality (autotelic). Education today in the United States is
losing the battle against technology, which is inherently easier for most people. Most of the time
the students can handle the technology much better than the teachers. Sometimes we lose the
battle when we are not able to motivate and encourage our students to be passionate about
education.

RESEARCH PROPOSAL: EFFICACY OF GAMIFICATION IN DEVELOPING AN

AUTOTELIC MENTALITY

While I most agree that this issue deserves attention, the majority of the people go on
ignoring it. This literature review examines one approach to finding out the efficacy of
gamification in education. The paper also finds the correlation between the effectiveness of
gamification in young adults and the motivation to have a self-driven mentality. This research
study wants to find possible strategies to use in the classroom combining traditional pedagogical
strategies and technological tools to approach this problem. Because of the fact my students do
not want to continue taking higher levels of Spanish in my school, I find very important to have a
solution of this kind in my classroom since the dropout rate from the Spanish level 3 and 4
courses is so high.
Purpose statement
The purpose of this research is to determine the effect of combining traditional
pedagogical strategies with technological tools in the foreign language classroom to motivate and
engage students to continue taking higher levels of Spanish in my school. This research also
sought to impact the use of technology in Spanish classes using gamification to develop an
autotelic mentality in the students.
Research Question
1.

What kind of gamification and strategies work better for young adults when motivating
them to continue taking the Spanish Language classes?

2.

Can the students become autotelic in both the manner they think and the way they apply
themselves to learning?

3.

What programs or strategies can teachers use to motivate the autotelic mentality in their
students?

RESEARCH PROPOSAL: EFFICACY OF GAMIFICATION IN DEVELOPING AN

AUTOTELIC MENTALITY

Importance of this study

Billions of dollars have been invested to invade our world with the games companies in
our society encourage us to play. Gamification in our society has turned into a powerful tool and
a smart way to motivate, engage and challenge customers. Consumers become more loyal or
participate the most when different kind of rewards or daily satisfactions are available because
these make them feel they have the power in their hands (Lee & Hammer, 2011).
Gamification is defined as the use of game design and mechanics to enhance non-game
contexts. (4 ways to bring gamification of Education to your classroom, 2013) Several
examples of this are seen nowadays in a variety of settings. For instance, we were more likely to
spend more when credit cards started implementing the reward points system. We were
motivated to try getting more points that could later be exchanged for money and gifts or receive
other free items from our favorite stores. Another example of gamification is plagued in our
social media sites where completion bars are used to motivate users to expand their profile by
showing the percentage of their profile completed. Even in our electric / hybrid cars, there are
bars that display the waste of gas or how well you conserve your car resources. Additionally,
there are companies offering special cards to show appreciation for your loyalty to their products
or restaurants. They notify you and send special incentives to your email every time you spend a
specific amount of money purchasing their goods makes you want to continue doing so. We are
surrounded by so many unique customer IDs that rank us or label us, and we feel so motivated
and engaged that we want to continue the game (Gamifeye, 2012). These kind of games in our
society have motivated us to be better consumers and waste less, for this reason, games help us

RESEARCH PROPOSAL: EFFICACY OF GAMIFICATION IN DEVELOPING AN

AUTOTELIC MENTALITY

increase motivation through engagement and reward. Schools should not get left behind. They
must prepare our future citizens to face challenges with intelligence not madness.
Currently, we are not seeing the kind of enthusiasm observed in those consumers at our
schools in our students. Instead, we hear students repeatedly expressing their dislike of school by
saying that school would be more fun without the need to attend class or that school should be
closed. The alarming statistics on dropouts are screaming at us. Numbers like 3,030,000, the
number of students we lose each year, or 8,300, the number of students that drop out per DAY in
the United States, this is something that anyone who is actually concerned about education
should be distressed about (Education Week, 2014). We are losing the battle, but we do see
positive data like the percent of customers completing tasks once the incentive of receiving
reward points or badges for their loyalty or other reasons is established. That percentage that was
once at 10% but has now increased to 80% (Van Antwerp, 2014). However, one can be very
concerned about the statistics that show the number of users registered to a site. For example,
Instagram (Moore, 2011), a popular social media site based on pictures, adds 130,000 users per
week, or 18 people per day. And this is a number that increases day after day for this site only
which has become quite popular amongst the teen population. Now lets picture Facebook, or
Google Circles, or Twitter; in all of them one can see that there are more people engaged with
playing games on their computer or mobile devices than there are students engaged in school. In
this day and age 72% of households play computer or video games. 18% of them are teens, while
53% are between 18 and 49 years old. Notice the jump from 18% to 53%. Something needs to be
done to engage, challenge, motivate, and promote the return of our students to schools and to our

RESEARCH PROPOSAL: EFFICACY OF GAMIFICATION IN DEVELOPING AN

AUTOTELIC MENTALITY

classrooms with the conviction to succeed, learn and apply the knowledge that they gained in the
past.
I started working at Woodstock High School last year, and I observed that the dropout
rate in our department of World Languages was alarming. We started the program with 245
students in Spanish 1 and 455 students in level 2 since many of the students coming from middle
school fed into our level 2 Spanish class. The plan was to keep as many students enrolled in
Spanish as we could, but instead, the number of students in the program was descending at a
rapid rate. Once students realized Spanish 3 was an optional class and that the only incentive was
the possibility of getting college credit for taking the AP Spanish Language and Culture exam
provided by the College Board, many of them stopped taking Spanish.
Last year, the dropout rate became more noticeable since the same issue had now been a
concern for several consecutive years. Unfortunately, few things have been done to attempt to
improve this situation. Our program for the past few years has always started with a high number
of students, around 500, and ended with 8-10 students taking the AP Spanish class. The other
students decide to drop out or prefer to take other elective classes. This is one of the main
reasons this study is so important to us. If we can implement the gamification system in a simple
way to motivate, engage, and challenge students, we will develop autotelic (self-driven)
mentalities in students making them eager to attend class and be prepared for whatever comes.
Gamification will help students develop marketing skills and other essentials needed to
may use succeed in our society such as problem-solving tactics and personal qualities such as
persistence, creativity, and resilience (Lee & Hammer, 2011). Motivation is the base of
preparing autotelic mentalities and developing powerful cognitive, emotional and social skills. I

RESEARCH PROPOSAL: EFFICACY OF GAMIFICATION IN DEVELOPING AN

AUTOTELIC MENTALITY

am convinced that the results that come from gamification are especially important for
developing 21st century skills which go beyond computers and technology according to Hanover
research (Lawrence, 2014). The critical skills for the 21st century learners include collaboration
and teamwork; creativity and imagination; critical-thinking skills; and problem solving.
In addition to these skills, Lawrence cites other critical skills for success such as: flexibility,
global and cultural awareness, leadership, and informational literacy. Our students will not
develop any of these skills in school unless we engage and motivate them to do so. The main
reason we should adopt and adapt gamification as part of our lessons is to develop autotelic
mentalities.
Games are everywhere. Minecraft, World of Warcraft, Growtopia are a few where
participants can share, grow and learn together. Why not use the same archetypes and apply them
in education to motivate and recreate a similar autotelic mentality? Research has shown that the
more interactivity that takes place in games, the more informative feedback that will be given. It
is natural that intrinsic motivation comes into play. Dr. Peterson explains this using a classic
puzzle toy. The player does not only do it for points and rewards but for ...the pure intrinsic
pleasure they get from seeing all the colors lined up (Shapiro, 2013).
Participants
One hundred two students will participate in this study along with their Spanish teacher.
Of these there are 60 males and 42 females who are taking Spanish 3 Honors. They are between
the ages of 15 and 17, and according to a survey taken at the beginning of the year, 80% of them
do not want to continue taking Spanish after this year because they only need that last year to
make their college application minimally superior to others.

RESEARCH PROPOSAL: EFFICACY OF GAMIFICATION IN DEVELOPING AN

AUTOTELIC MENTALITY

Data Collection
For the data collection I will interview some students and I will record their interviews.
Then I will be creating surveys for the students to respond and I will be checking their tests
progress. I will mainly focus in the SLO test (Pre and post assessment), Finally I will have a
journal where I will write all their attitudes, comments and body language.
Limitations and recommendations
The selection of technology used plays an important role in the process of engagement
for the students. It is important that students are recognized for their achievements and are able
to demonstrate their progress. Unfortunately, this type of system can conflict with our traditional
school rules because other students grades should not be made public to the class. For this
reason, I would like to do further research in the future using more types of technology over
longer time periods. The participants should be selected from different years and levels, rather
than only coming from one level of Spanish class. Implementing this methodology over longer
periods of time will allow for more accurate, full results. Also, the students felt they are
practicing talking much more than writing, which tells me I should try to keep the programs
balanced enough so that my students get a fair share of each aspect of learning a foreign
language (Appendix C). Finally, the programs which are selected to be used during class
instruction should be carefully reviewed before final implementation to ensure that they are the
best options for the benefit of the students.
Conclusion
Many articles and various research reports share the common opinion that gamification in
education is an urgent need which will benefit our students greatly. Our students need to feel

RESEARCH PROPOSAL: EFFICACY OF GAMIFICATION IN DEVELOPING AN

AUTOTELIC MENTALITY

challenged, motivated and engaged in school, and it is imperative to promote the autotelic
mentality in order to pave the way for our future generations.
There is not much existing evidence about how the gamification will motivate students to
develop an autotelic (self-driven) mentality, yet my experience revealed that technology is the
bridge that helped the students develop their genuine desire for engagement in the language
class. More research needs to be done on the best practices that could be implemented to
support, encourage, challenge and bring back the autotelic mentality in our students today.

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Computer History. Reality is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change
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http://proxy.kennesaw.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?
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Appendices
Survey
Personal Informadion
Dear Parents:

Welcome to our School! I am so happy to have your child in my class of Spanish. It is always
exciting to start a new course and rewarding when you successfully complete it. Please feel free
to contact me with any questions or concerns throughout the school year. I am looking forward to
a rewarding year as your child successfully discovers the advantages of learning the Spanish
language.

By completing this form it will certify that you and your child have read the course resume,
syllabi online and have signed the packet digitally. This packet includes classroom expectations,

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15

course description, late policy, materials needed, late work, make up work, consequences,
evaluation explanation, what to do to improve grades, suggestions to study another language, lab
rules, and online services in Spanish class this year.

Also be aware that it is your responsibility to provide internet connection and transportation if
your child is assigned detention before/after school.

Feel free to sign up to our text message reminder for our class:
Spanish 3h. Send the text to 470-798-3728 with the message @sp3h
Spanish AP Send the text to 470-798-3728 with the message @breauxspa

Dear Students:

Please share the information above with your parents and complete the information about you.
Also you can go to http://tinyurl.com/oy5gyp2 to complete this form.

On behalf of the Woodstock faculty, we are thrilled to be working with your child.

Seora Breaux
* Required
Top of Form

RESEARCH PROPOSAL: EFFICACY OF GAMIFICATION IN DEVELOPING AN

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S E C T I O N I : parents complete this part *
Example: 03/05/2013 11:30 AM
LAST NAME of the student *

FIRST NAME of the student *

This year the student is talking... *

o

Spanish 3H

Spanish AP

Guardian/Parents' name *

Parents cell/phone number *

Parents' email address *

Grade *
o

9th

10th

16

RESEARCH PROPOSAL: EFFICACY OF GAMIFICATION IN DEVELOPING AN

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o

11th

12th

S E C T I O N I I : Students complete this part *

Last year Spanish teacher *
o

Mrs. Gogarty

Mrs. Carvajal

Mrs. Hinckley

Mrs. Breaux

Other:

Do you have brothers or sisters? List them with their ages here.

Do you have pets? List them.

List favorite things to do *

Do you belong to a team?Club? Which one(s)? *

17

RESEARCH PROPOSAL: EFFICACY OF GAMIFICATION IN DEVELOPING AN

AUTOTELIC MENTALITY

What is your favorite book? *

What is your favorite Movie? *

What is your favorite food? *

What is your favorite videogame? *

What is your favorite song in Spanish? *

What is your favorite drink? *

What is your favorite TV Show? *

Some of the things that bug me are ... *

I worry about... *

18

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School would be better if *

This is what a teacher did last year that I really liked ... *

This is what a teacher did last year that bothered or upset me ... *

I feel I have better grades when... *

One goal Id like to accomplish this year ... *

My favorite memory is ... *

Something you should really know about me or my background is: *

What countries have you visited? Tell me if you have lived there... *

Write down any one question you have about anything ...

19

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Share with me your cell phone number. To answer the question via text message.
(Optional)

Have you been to a Spanish-speaking country? If so, tell me about it. Have you had
any Spanish classes before this one? Describe how they were *

Did you have contact with any Hispanic? When? How? What happened?

Tell me about your choice to take Spanish: why you chose it and what you plan to do
with it.

Have you worked?________If so where? ______

Have you heard about this class? What have other people commented to you about
this class? *

Do you have any recommendation/s for this class? *

Bottom of Form

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21

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Appendix A
Blog

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Appendix B

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Appendix C