A Model of Extensive Gamification of Introductory Physics Courses.

The transition to online learning prompted by the Covid emergency in the Spring semester of 2020 caused a widespread lack of engagement among students who were thrusted from in person to online courses. This has been a common theme among students who choose a traditional in person education over online degrees. To address the decrease in student engagement and motivation we adopted the use of gamification starting in the Summer of 2020. The ongoing effort is a collaboration among faculty in the Department of Physics and Astronomy, faculty in the College of Education and Human Development and a team of instructional designers at UTSA. The collaboration has led to cycles of implementation and refinement of the gamified approach through the addition of new elements and the modification of existing elements based on students’ feedback, research on learning and instructional design. We will present the structure of the course and how gamification has been blended into the course design. We will also present how gamification has been leveraged to overhaul the assessment tools and to introduce elements aimed at addressing diversity, equity and inclusion. Finally we will show how this approach lends to the transition to a flipped classroom model.