Gamification to avoid cognitive biases: An experiment of gamifying a forecasting course

• Published in: Technological forecasting & social change Vol. 167; p. 120725
• Main Authors: Legaki, Nikoletta-Zampeta, Karpouzis, Kostas, Assimakopoulos, Vassilios, Hamari, Juho
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York Elsevier Inc 01.06.2021; Elsevier B.V; Elsevier Science Ltd
• Subjects: Between-subjects design; Business administration; Business schools; Climate change; Cognition; Decision Making; Economic change; Economic conditions; Education; Forecasting; Gamification; Global temperature changes; Judgment Bias; Learning; Set (Psychology); Storytelling; Teaching; Treatment methods; Decision Making; Judgment Bias; Education; Forecasting; Gamification; Teaching
• ISSN: 0040-1625; 1873-5509
• DOI: 10.1016/j.techfore.2021.120725

•We examined the impact of gamification on learning about judgmental biases.•We ran a 2 (read yes | no) x 2 (gamification yes | no) between-subject experiment.•Our findings reveal positive effects of gamification on learning.•Students exhibited better learning outcomes under gamified condition compared to reading-based condition•The impact of gamification differed between engineering and business school students. In their daily lives, people are confronted with situations where they need to form a schema of possible future scenarios and the likelihood of them occurring, be it about climate change, economic up- or downturn, or even the potential success of a romantic date. Be these issues of mundane or universal importance, this judgmental forecasting poses people with a difficult pervasive cognitive challenge. Commonly, judgmental forecasting is taught in forecasting courses syllabi, and the pedagogy surrounding it is challenging. However, gamification and game-based learning have risen as promising tools to simulate different kinds of scenarios and stimulate cognitive problem solving. This study investigates the effects of a gamified application with points, levels, challenges, storytelling and leaderboard for teaching judgmental forecasting by conducting a 2×2 between-subjects experiment (treatments: i) read: yes vs no, and ii) gamification: yes vs no), with a sample of 285 students of a School of Electrical and Computer Engineering and a Business Administration Department. The findings indicate that the gamified application improved learning outcomes regarding the heuristics and biases that affect judgmental forecasting by almost 15%, supporting the use of gamification in forecasting education.