ACCEPTED FOR PUBLICATION AT ECGBL 2016, PAISLEY, SCOTLAND 6-7 OCTOBER GAME ELEMENTS NOT REFLECTED IN PROCEEDINGS HAVE BEEN ADDED TO THIS VERSION OF THE PAPER 1 How can educators with limited resources gamify their classes? A Design-based approach. Björn Lefers, Marcus Birkenkrahe Berlin School of Economics and Law, Berlin, Germany bjoern.lefers@hwr-berlin.de msb@hwr-berlin.de Abstract Hamari et al. (2014) reviewed 24 peer-reviewed empirical studies on gamification and concluded that gamification works, but that both the role of the context and the qualities of the users constitute confounding factors for its success. We suggest that there is a third aspect to be taken into account: the design quality of a gamified system. Using a design-based methodology and both qualitative and quantitative data this empirical study addresses the following question: How can a gamified learning website be designed, developed and implemented? The goal is to show educators and researchers how they can build their own gamified learning website with limited resources (time, money and personnel) and highlight confounding factors. This is important, because gamified systems can only be compared properly if they are designed well and in a similar fashion. The description of the design process of the gamified learning website follows the ADDIE-model that defines five steps: analysis, design, development, implementation and evaluation. We illustrate our approach with an experiment conducted with undergraduates in two classes between 2013 and 2015. The class website was built with WordPress, an open source content management system, and some additional plugins. The quality of a gamified system does depend on the types of design elements that are being used, but even more so on the behaviors that these design elements stimulate in learners and how they are embedded within a website. Led by theory, we show how a well designed reward system for gamification might look like. Compared with previous classes, the gamified learning website led to more activity and better grades. These positive aspects are due to the extrinsic effectiveness of the gamified system. Negative voices from learners concerned: too much content, too few popular content types and usability issues. The process of reading this paper is also gamified. Keywords Gamification, game design, game based technologies, gameful design, instructional design 1. Introduction This paper is part of a planned series of publications on making knowledge and skills more accessible for people with a social mindset to help make the world a better place. This paper practices what it preaches, because the paper itself is gamified: while reading it you will collect badges and points (roughly one point per word read): Figure 1: Badge: Getting Started Deterding et al. (2011) define gamification as “the use of design elements characteristic for games in non- game contexts.” Werbach and Hunter (2012) define design elements as “specific characteristics of games that you can apply in gamification.” The main goal of games is to entertain users (cp. Deterding et al. 2011; Zichermann & Cunningham 2011; Flatla et al. 2011). Thus gamification within the educational context is seen as a way to make learning more fun. But how can teachers gamify their class successfully?