Teaching Computer Skills while Engaging Students: A Gamified Approach to Word Processing

Abstract

Learning computer skills while attending classes at the School of Humanities of the University of Padua can be little engaging. Low interest on the subject is paired by low resources by the School. Yet, effective computer skills are increasingly important in a society were everyone knows how to use a smartphone but might get lost while using a complex software. In this paper we address the problem of motivating students to acquire computer skills in word processing by organizing a series of activities based on a gamification approach. A suite of automatic tools give the students control of their learning progressions, provide immediate feedback to their activities, and engage them by modulating the difficulty of the proposed steps. Initial results with a group of History undergraduate students are presented, together with a proposal for a novel approach that is under test.