四国地区

教育システム情報学会 2018年度学生研究発表会

Introducing Gamification into Disaster Education for Foreigners Living inJapan
122Liu Meiqin* , Hiroyuki Mitsuhara* , Masami Shishibori** Graduate School of Advanced Technology and Science, Tokushima University
2* Graduate School of Science and Technology, Tokushima University
1Abstract: In Japan, such a disaster-prone country, lacking correct knowledge may contribute to death when
encountering disaster, so disaster education aiming at foreigners is necessary. However, many foreign people areunwilling to spend time on it. To improve this situation, gamification is employed. Gamification is defined as using
some game design elements in non-game context. Gamification now is a hot spot in education field, which canpromote students' motivation and engagement in learning activities. In this paper, a brief introduction on
gamification, as well as some game elements used in disaster education is given.
Keyword: foreigner, disaster education, gamification, ICT

1.

Introduction

An increasing number of foreign people are coming toand living in Japan these years, and the trend keeps rising.
Unlike Japanese, the majority of the foreigners haveneither disaster awareness, nor disaster knowledge, they
have no idea how to do when encountering disasters.
Such foreign people may die in disasters, which may
contribute to social problems and diplomatic events.
One method proved feasible and effective fordisaster reduction and prevention is disaster education.
For example, Japan, as well known, is a disaster-prone
country，however, Japan always has the lower casualties
in disasters compared with other countries and areas,
which benefits from the completed and advanced disastereducation system.
Most foreigners are reluctant to invest time on
disaster education, and furthermore, disaster education is
not compulsory. These negative factors lead to the low
rate of foreigners’ disaster education.
Considering this situation, gamification is employed
into disaster education to improve foreigners’ motivationand engagement.
The remainder of this paper is divided into threeparts: 1) Fundamental idea, mainly introducing thedefinition of gamification, and common game elementsthat will be used in disaster education system; 2) Systemdesign, mainly declaring how to use game design
elements in disaster education system; 3) Summary,stating the current status and future research work.

2.

Collabor
Challenge

tion

Level

Extrinsic

Badge

ation

Intrinsic

Competi

RewardMissionLeaderboard

Fig.1 Motivation needs and game design elements
Current research work will introduce some common
game elements into the disaster education system,
including: 1) Badge, to give immediate feedback forparticipants’ collaboration and competition, goal setting,challenge achieving; 2) Leaderboard, to encourage social
interaction, promote participants’ feelings of honor andcompetition; 3) Point, to be as extrinsic rewards for
performing tasks (3).

3.

Disaster Education System Design

Disaster education aiming at foreigners mainly focuseson two aspects: increasing disaster awareness andobtaining disaster knowledge. A multi-platform system
will be designed and developed to provide foreigners
learning resources in the forms of text, picture, video etc.
These kinds of knowledge and information may makepeople realize they are living in a disaster-prone country,
where disasters, containing typhoon, strong earthquake,as well as the sequent tsunami, occur in a high frequency,
so they should build disaster awareness andcorresponding measures in case of suffering disasters.
This system will consist of two parts: 1) Server side,which is mainly responsible for users’ management andmessage pushing; 2) Client side, which focuses on users’management, learning resources management, and quizmanagement. The game elements mentioned above will

Fundamental Idea

Gamification is defined as using some game design
elements in non-game context (1), and now it is a hot spotin education field. There have been many researches andexperiments that proved gamification as an effective
method in increasing participation and improving
learning activities.
In general, most researchers have reached aconsensus in game design elements, including badge,level, point, leaderboard, competition and collaboration,challenge, etc. All of these elements relate to sometheories in intrinsic or extrinsic motivation. The
motivation needs corresponding to different gameelements are illustrated in Fig.1 (2).

225

四国地区

教育システム情報学会 2018年度学生研究発表会

be used in this system to improve foreign people’s
disaster education. System structure diagram is shown
below as Fig.2

3)

User Management
Server Side
Client Side

User Management
Material

Learning Module

QuizFig.2 System Structure

4.

3.1 Server SideThe system needs a light server, which mainly takes
charge of user management, including registration, login,saving users’ profile.
1) Registration, user can apply an account for thesystem, and thus the server will save user’s personal
information, including learning duration, learning
record, badges, leaderboard, and points, so that thelearning will keep sustainable. User should keep theusername and password for the account. Sure, user
can also use this system as guest, but the learning
will not be recorded.
2) Login, user can login by using this system’saccounts, also by some other popular Apps’
accounts, like Facebook, Line, Wechat, in result thatusers can skip the registration step and use thesystem easily.
3) Saving Users’ Profile, server will save user’s
personal information, including account, total
learning time, learning record, quiz information, as
well as badges, points that user obtains. User’s
profile will be download from server to application
when the application being awaked, and upload
from application to server when application being
switched to background.

if they have a good command of disaster knowledge.
Through quiz, user will find out their weak points
and deepen understanding on disaster knowledge.
Gamification design mechanism, the gamification
rules are as follows, a) awaking the app gets one
point, no more than one point per day; b) using theapp for at least five days in a week will win abee-badge for hard working; c) reading learningmaterials for at least five minutes can get one point;d) completing a quiz can get one point, at most one
point per day, and a high accuracy over 80% will
get an extra point; e) the first place on theleaderboard in each week will get a mystery chest
including a random number of points between 1 to
5. We are thinking about how to use these points,
user may redeem small gift, or a discount for mealin university café.

SummaryThis paper did not involve in further research on therelationship between gamification and theories.
Gamification is used a lot in education fields, especiallyin offline classroom.
This paper is an attempt of gamification in disastereducation
combiningwithinformation
andcommunication technology, and it is expected thatgamification can play an important role in this field.
Besides the mentioned common game elements, thefuture research work will try to use some new gamedesign elements, such as game map, game chest,challenge etc.
In the follow-up research work, shelter map will be
designed and developed in the system, which enables
users to listen the voice broadcast when passing by ashelter. Subscribing function will also be provided,
which enables users subscribe message. Server will pushregular message, as well as some important message incase of emergency. User can disable the regular pushing,but emergency message will be given high priority.

References(1) S. Deterding, D. Dixon, R. Khaled, and L. Nacke: “Fromgame design elements to gamefulness: Defininggamification”, Proceedings of the 15th international
academic MindTrek Conference: Envisioning future
media environments, ACM, pp. 9-15 (2011)(2) B. Huang, and K. Hew: “Implementing a theory-driven
gamification model in higher education flipped courses:Effects on out-of-class activity completion and quality ofartifacts”, Computers & Education, Vol. 125, pp. 254-272(2018)(3) R. RoyBiekeZaman: “Need-supporting gamification ineducation: An assessment of motivational effects overtime”, Computers & Education, Vol. 127, pp.283-297(2018)

3.2 Client Side
Client side is designed as a multi-platform application
which will fulfill basic function at present, including user
management module, and learning module. Also, somegame design elements will be adopted in application toenhance engagement.
1) User management module, this module focuses onusers’ registration, login, badges, points, levels andleaderboard managing.
2) Learning module, this module provides various
learning materials, including texts, videos, pictures.
User can obtain disaster information, i.e. thefrequency of disaster in Japan, and disasterknowledge that may make them survive in disaster.
This module also provides quiz, making user check226