Initial student perception of gamification

I wanted to capture some data about what the students thought about the idea of gamification before we really jumped into it with both feet. So after they had a chance to see six of the leaderboards, the perks and the level requirements I asked them these 9 questions:

  1. Is your overall initial impression of gamification in a class positive or negative and what makes you lean that way?
  3. What type of student do you think might do worse in a a class that has some gamification elements? Why do you think that is?
  4. What do you think of the fact that the gamification elements (leaderboards, levels, perks, achievements) are not part of your grade?
  5. What parts of the gamification of this class would you change? Why would you make that change?
  6. There are 58 possible “perks” that you can earn. Which type of perk appeals to you? Which ones do you think are useless (naturally, different people will feel differently about the perks, so I tried to include a wide variety).
  7. What do you think about leaderboards (and why do you think that)? Do they help motivate some students? Do you think they will help motivate you?
  8. What about the idea of “loot” as you progress up the levels? Is that motivational? I image this will depend on what kind (if any) loot we actually have. Maybe I should ask what type of loot you would find motivational?
  9. If there’s something you want to say about gamification, but I didn’t ask the right question, feel free to use this question to say anything that you want.

Students will be answering these questions this week and also responding to what their peers say as part of our regular online forum (most of this class takes place on Moodle; we’re just doing the gamification part here).  I’ll post some of their answers later in the week. Are there any questions that I forgot to ask? Specifically questions where there pre-gamification and post-gamification answers might be interesting.