Attention-based Adaptation in Gamified MOOCs

This Massive Open Online Courses becomes a successful way to seek useful information and to develop knowledge. However, MOOCs may suffer from high dropout rates due to the loss of students’ interest and engagement. Different studies analyzed students’ behavior and attention in online courses to determine what can increase their engagement. They often defined some stereotypical patterns that characterize the students’ engagement and that can be used to enhance the design of MOOCs content. However, students may have different behaviors over time and their attention may depend on various conditions. We believe that the students are not belonging to an exclusive user type and the consideration of the variability of their behavior and attention over time can improve their engagement. In this paper, we suggest a dynamic adaptation strategy of MOOC gamification elements, such as trophies, progression bar and avatar, on the basis of students’ temporal attention. The strategy uses eye tracking and students’ real-time interaction with online learning resources to adapt gamification elements. The objective is to enhance students’ behavioral engagement, especially their participation in discussion forum. We conducted an experiment to examine the acceptability of the proposed gamified learning tool and the proposed adaptation strategy. The results of the experiment show that the students were satisfied about the gamified learning tool and that proposed adaptation strategy increased their participation in forums.