Q&A: Emilie Maccarini on winning the Digital Innovation Challenge

What did you examine in your paper?
Emilie Maccarini: I investigated whether Generation Y – people born between 1980 and 1994 – is more motivated by gaming features in education than younger and older generations. “Gamification” refers to the use of gaming strategies in non-game contexts to engage people in carrying out certain tasks, such as learning. Certain marketing professionals think that these features are necessary to keep “digital natives” interested during lessons.

Can you give some examples of such strategies?
Yes, like introducing leaderboards on websites to make the accomplishments of students – like high scores – more visible, giving students increasingly more difficult challenges to solve or using a narrative format to explain subject matter.

Did you find that Generation Y needs this approach to concentrate?
No, the results of my online survey demonstrate that these youngsters are not more or less susceptible to gamification strategies than their older and younger counterparts. I only discovered that Generation Y members have a greater preference for e-learning over classroom education when there is time pressure to accomplish a task. But gamification is far from the being the Holy Grail for educators who want to motivate digital natives. A leaderboard with high scores can, for example, also be demotivating if students don’t succeed in ever seeing their names there.

Your essay won you a visit to the London School of Economics.
Yes, I spent three days at the institution, which was a very stimulating experience. I also had the chance to present my essay during the annual Social Study of Information Technology conference, a prestigious occasion with researchers from all over the world. The advice and contacts I gained during my stay should help me a great deal in my further career.

www.digitalinnovationchallenge.org