Gamification as a Supportive Tool for School Children with Dyslexia

Dymora Dymora,Niemiec Niemiec

doi:10.3390/informatics6040048

Abstract

Gamification, in its nature, combines not only games but also the whole psychological environment. Thanks to this, a properly prepared implementation of gameplaying can encourage people to compete with others and achieve the set tasks and goals. A person feels fulfilled that through his actions has performed a mission or reached a new level. It stimulates them to continue their activity and self-improvement to be better and beat their records. Its advantage is also that it does not have to be limited to one technology or method—it can be realized both through a simple scenario and a corkboard with results, it can also be embedded, e.g., in a virtual or augmented reality. This article focuses on the gamification of dyslexia, a common disorder of developmental disorders among pupils. It affects about 10%–15% of school-age children. The research narrowed the field of the study to one of the aspects of developmental dyslexia—dysorthography and making spelling mistakes by people affected by this disorder. This work aims to present an original application which is using gamification as a supportive tool for the learning of school children with diagnosed dyslexia. The conducted study was based on the implementation of original algorithms and scenarios of gamification on mobile devices, especially smartphones. School children are following a gamification approach for a specified period. As a conclusion, it can be stated that the proposed framework and gamification can help in the learning of people with dyslexia.

Highlights

Gamification refers to the use of mechanisms and schemes known from role-playing (RPG) or computer games to increase the involvement and mobilization of participants
The research narrowed the field of the study to one of the aspects of developmental dyslexia—dysorthography and making spelling mistakes by people affected by this disorder
Authors in [2,4] define game-based learning as an approach that implies the design of real, autonomous games, whereas the gamified learning is a learning process that concentrates on extending or changing an established learning process in order to create an improved version of the learning process that users

Summary

Introduction

Gamification refers to the use of mechanisms and schemes known from role-playing (RPG) or computer games to increase the involvement and mobilization of participants. Authors in [2] define the concept of gamification as “the use of game design elements in non-game contexts.”. This definition is widely used by many researchers, i.e., [3,4,5]. In [3], authors stipulate that gamification may be defined as “the use of design (rather than game-based technology or other game-related practices) elements (rather than fully developed games) characteristic for games (rather than play or playfulness) in non-game contexts (regardless of specific usage intentions, contexts, or implementation media).”. Authors in [2,4] define game-based learning as an approach that implies the design of real, autonomous games, whereas the gamified learning is a learning process that concentrates on extending or changing an established learning process in order to create an improved version of the learning process that users

Objectives

Methods

Results

Conclusion