TY - GEN
T1 - Using gamification to orient and motivate students to contribute to oss projects
AU - Diniz, Guilherme C.
AU - Silva, Marco A.Graciotto
AU - Gerosa, Marco A.
AU - Steinmacher, Igor
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2017 IEEE.
PY - 2017/6/28
Y1 - 2017/6/28
N2 - Students can benefit from contributing to Open Source Software (OSS), since they can enrich their portfolio and learn with real world projects. However, sometimes students are demotivated to contribute due to entrance barriers. On the other hand, gamification is widely used to engage and motivate people to accomplish tasks and improve their performance. The goal of this work is to analyze the use of gamification to orient and motivate undergraduate students to overcome onboarding barriers and engage to OSS projects. To achieve this goal, we implemented four gaming elements (Quests, Points, Ranking, and Levels) in GitLab and assessed the environment by means of a study conducted with 17 students, within a real OSS project (JabRef). At the end of the study, the students evaluated their experience through a questionnaire. We found that the Quest element helped to guide participants and keep them motivated and points helped by providing feedback on students' performed tasks. We conclude that the gamified environment oriented the students in an attempt to make a contribution and that gamification can motivate and orient newcomers' to engage to OSS projects.
AB - Students can benefit from contributing to Open Source Software (OSS), since they can enrich their portfolio and learn with real world projects. However, sometimes students are demotivated to contribute due to entrance barriers. On the other hand, gamification is widely used to engage and motivate people to accomplish tasks and improve their performance. The goal of this work is to analyze the use of gamification to orient and motivate undergraduate students to overcome onboarding barriers and engage to OSS projects. To achieve this goal, we implemented four gaming elements (Quests, Points, Ranking, and Levels) in GitLab and assessed the environment by means of a study conducted with 17 students, within a real OSS project (JabRef). At the end of the study, the students evaluated their experience through a questionnaire. We found that the Quest element helped to guide participants and keep them motivated and points helped by providing feedback on students' performed tasks. We conclude that the gamified environment oriented the students in an attempt to make a contribution and that gamification can motivate and orient newcomers' to engage to OSS projects.
KW - barriers
KW - engagement
KW - gamification
KW - motivation
KW - newcomers
KW - open source software
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85025831916&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=85025831916&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1109/CHASE.2017.7
DO - 10.1109/CHASE.2017.7
M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:85025831916
T3 - Proceedings - 2017 IEEE/ACM 10th International Workshop on Cooperative and Human Aspects of Software Engineering, CHASE 2017
SP - 36
EP - 42
BT - Proceedings - 2017 IEEE/ACM 10th International Workshop on Cooperative and Human Aspects of Software Engineering, CHASE 2017
PB - Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc.
T2 - 10th IEEE/ACM International Workshop on Cooperative and Human Aspects of Software Engineering, CHASE 2017
Y2 - 23 May 2017
ER -