Twelfth International Conference on e-Learning & Innovative Pedagogies

Abstract

e-Learning may be defined as learning by the use of electronic technologies outside of a traditional classroom. There are many advantages of e-Learning. It is an efficient, convenient and flexible way of delivering courses online. Unfortunately, there are some disadvantages too. One of them is the excessive focus on the theoretical aspects of learning. A good approach to this limitation is the implementation of the idea of learning by doing, in which learning should be, as much as possible, guided by experiences. This means to include additional functionality to the learning management systems (LMS) in order to implement the links between the theory and the laboratory experiments. One way to implement this improvement is by the use of Gamification plugins. Gamification is the process of taking something that already exists and integrating game mechanics into it to motivate participation or loyalty. This work presents an a Moodle use case in which a course about IP Telephony is adapted to include a new plugin for gamification that combines laboratory challenges with the theoretical content to improve the learning experience. The results are very promising, since the learning experience was really improved according to the students feedback.