Eighteenth International Conference on Technology, Knowledge, and Society

Abstract

Gamification is known to be a proven method of managing business companies’ personnel performance and motivation. In modern Russia, this practice is now gaining popularity in universities and across academia. Despite criticism from the advocate of traditional methods of education, the scale and variety of gamification methods and means introduced they are slowly incorporated into the curriculum even as obligatory teaching practices. This paper presents the second set of results of the experiment of introducing gamification practices to teaching International Politics and International Relations at the faculty of World Politics of Moscow State University in 2016 – 2021 and its two international branches (campuses) in Yerevan , Armenia and Dushanbe, Tajikistan. Gamification was applied as an additional method of teaching and evaluating (including mid-semester tests and course exams at the end of it) to both graduate and undergraduate students, studying such subjects as History of International Relations (2d year of BA studies), International Security (3d year of BA studies) and Peace Research (2 year of MA studies). Both Russian and English-language courses were included. In this paper, I introduce two blocs of methods and practices that were applied. First, I discuss how the semester exam was divided into 3 stages with a choice for students to take a full- or partial exa , and the results of this experiment. Second, I highlight the major problems with student motivation, group performance successes and failures and some psychological-cultural issues that were revealed.