REFLECTION: BENEFITS OF GAMIFICATION IN ONLINE HIGHER EDUCATION

academic challenges, such as those involved in the dissertation process and other elements of higher impact on task completion by augmenting the experiential elements encountered by students who are engaging in the learning process. When a task becomes mundane, it typically lacks a positive feedback loop, which results in it becoming easier for a person to put off their intended task and forget to return to the activity prior to deadline. Many online learners participate in their degree programs in the midst of highly involved personal schedules, which can lead to lapses in organization and reduced performance as a student. Many applications have promise for improving the levels of fun, engagement, motivation, and task completion in various areas of daily life. Online faculty, can integrate these applications with existing online curricula to help students bridge the gap between passive stagnation in a course and active engagement with the course material to increase their grades earned and course-wide satisfaction. INTRODUCTION In online higher education, students are expected to overcome obstacles not typically experienced by their face-to-face counterparts (Gillett-Swan, 2017). These can include isolation, lacking of a physical learning environment (Kortemeyer, 2016), additional work or family commitments, time management concerns, being off campus, and the assumption that the student is a reliable and independent learner (Karen, 2004). In fact, a student must complete tasks in a timely materials in order to excel in higher education. While different styles of student motivation exist, many students will engage in a “ramping-up” process prior to course deadlines (Urban, 2016), which means that the majority of the work is done closer to the deadline for the required task. What happens to students who reach a level of education in which there is no externally assigned deadline, such as writing a dissertations? Games have been used throughout human history to assist people in overcoming high levels of discomfort. During the reign of King Atys of Lydia, for this level of catastrophe (Herodotus, 2003). The solution for the people of Lydia was to eat every other day. This may seem like an incomprehensible feat for any people intimately connected to a threemeal-per-day eating cycle, but the Lydians were able to transcend their needs for food by spending the entire second day playing games. This allowed them to focus on the parts of their experience that were not cyclically devoted to their normal patterns of eating and to achieve a level of mindfulness that allowed the cravings to fade into the background of their present focus. Games in modern times can be used for a similar purpose as a healthy escape, if they are used in proper quantities at the appropriate time (Granic, Lobel, & Engels, 2014). When exploring incorporating the gaming Journal of Instructional Research | Volume 7 (2018) 126 GRAND CANYON UNIVERSITY mindset into an educational situation, it is also important to understand why we play games. Jane McGonigal (2011) in Reality Is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better, and How They Can Change the World, explains that we play for very enjoyment. By extension, if a person is choosing to play a game over another activity, or possibly a responsibility, it could be due to the person wanting to escape the pressure or monotony of the avoided task. Another reason we engage in play is to reduce stress. Some people will use the game as a way to pace themselves throughout their day, alternating between responsibility, or work, and enjoyment, reason for playing a game is often accomplished: to improve life satisfaction (Przybylski, Rigby, & Ryan, 2010). Rather than have all the games in life distract the student from completing an academic task, it should be possible to utilize this gaming mentality to reduce the stress and dread often experienced when beginning to work on an assignment in higher learning (Urh, Vukovic, Jereb, & Pintar, 2015). By making progress on the academic task, the other goals of reducing stress and improving personal satisfaction would occur. In addition, the student would lower the barrier to engaging in the work of their online course and create shorter milestones that are easier to achieve while progressing towards completing the overall academic assignments they may have otherwise been avoiding. PERSONAL REFLECTION: THE BEGINNING In the quest to complete a terminal degree, many academic programs identify writing the pass in order to be conferred the title of “doctor” (Glathorn & Joyner, 2005). This challenge is designed to test the doctoral candidate in a variety how gamifying the process can increase the focus a student brings into this particular challenge. It also to learning and engaging in academic tasks, and it then poses important questions to frame academic work in a light that encourages passion for academic research and writing instead of settling for more negative alternatives. There are two ways to measure the length of time it took me to move from completing my comprehensive exams to defending my dissertation. In May of the third year of my doctorate program, I passed my Comprehensive Exam. At this point, the goal of the entire program shifted from mastering the content involved in a Doctorate program in Counselor Education & Supervision to completing the dissertation. I was driven to complete this as quickly as anyone ever had, and I knew that I had two more courses to take before entering “Continuous Matriculation,” the phase where many doctoral candidates lose focus on their degree and courses as scheduled, and by the tenth month after comps I had assembled my dissertation committee and completed my prospectus. Everyone was on board and loved the topic, and we began talking about a six-month timeframe for me to deliver a literature review and methodology. I was poised to complete the goal, and in record time. Except, that is not how this story goes. I changed jobs from a director position to a clinical one. Less responsibility would surely lead to more time for me to focus on writing. It did not. I knew what I after everything I had written for my prospectus, research courses, and every other purpose I had ever faced with my topic, it just did not work. My motivation died. Five months after my prospectus was approved, I had made minimal progress. I decided I would start everything from page one with the same topic but completely new writing. Nothing re-used—no excuses. After I wrote a few of my favorite topics, I was stuck. I stayed this way until six-months later. I could not bring myself to write, and I hated that I lacked the time and desire to work in a way that led to tangible progress. The calendar had moved all the way to January of my fourth year in the doctorate program. That is when I decided to use challenge. I decided to gamify my dissertation. FLOW AND THE PSYCHOLOGY OF GAMES Long before video games became a household noticed a principle, which is now referred to in process of entering a state of consciousness where