Facilitating Gamification for Teachers: An Ontological Approach

Gamified e-learning systems aim to enhance learning outcomes and foster learner's engagement by incorporating multiple game elements. These elements have varying influence on the learner's behavior, such as encouraging focus, competition, or exploratory attitudes. However, game elements are often implemented within the learning process in a uniform way that is not adaptable, with no available metadata about them, and without the teacher's involvement or choice. However, since game elements have a behavioral effect on the learners, the selection of relevant game elements should include the teachers' objectives for effective gamification. Therefore, this paper proposes an approach to facilitate understanding and formalizing gamification concepts for enhanced understanding from the teacher's side so that they can apply it and share it. The proposed approach begins with defining gamification and its associated properties and how it can be formalized in a semantic model. This ontological model is then populated through data collection and integration processes, which is then validated by means of SPARQL queries. This approach lays the foundation for future advancements, including the potential to recommend appropriate teachers to assist another in integrating gamification into e-learning processes.