ifkad articles

How Digital Natives should Acquire Knowledge with Gamification

Beatrix Bókayné,ráskó, Zoltán Baracskai

The purpose of this paper is to explore the behaviour of the ‘shallow knowledge-generation’ toward educational games. The aim is to single out those gamification solutions which enable the ‘Digital Natives’ (DN) generation to enter into a flow state while learning and to observe how the structure of the games affect their viability. By understanding the different mindset patterns of DNs, we will be able to observe how different DNs can be facilitated to reach the state of flow by enjoying the games, rather than getting bored, getting anxious or becoming dependent. In this paper, we select gamification solutions that will help Digital Natives to attain a state of flow while studying with the help of Knowledge Based Systems and Artificial Intelligence. We believe that the mindset elements that are indicators of suitable gamification solutions can be traced in a simplified way with ‘if, then’ rules. In the era of the ‘shallow generation’, Digital Natives are trained as if they would need the same tools as the Digital Immigrants and their ancestors. Instead, we present the idea of facilitating the ‘shallowness’ as a starting point, because this generation knows a little about everything, and this is not necessarily a bad thing – if we arouse their attention, they can deepen their knowledge easily, because knowledge is just ‘a click away’. This generation of Digital Natives does not need to be specialized in a strict way but rather become despecialized with the ability to search for knowledge efficiently and thus to become competitive. Furthermore, this model will be unique as it will examine both the DI’s (creators of the game) and the DN’s (players) sides. The content will be provided by Digital Immigrants, so that DNs acquire the same knowledge as they would learn from traditional textbooks, but through these games. Furthermore, the games will be made by Digital Natives, because they understand how to gain shallow knowledge in a fast and exciting way – to raise the interest of their fellow DNs, and encourage and direct their further search for knowledge. AI will surely eliminate jobs, but it will also create new ones: we need to prepare for transition from specialization to despecialization. We should deliberately support the cognitive capacity of shallow knowledge which can be deepened when necessary.

IN: Proceedings IFKAD 2018 – Societal Impact of Knowledge and Design
PP: 134-143