AMALGAMATION OF INDIRECT GAMIFICATION INTO DEVELOPMENT AND OPERATIONS (DEVOPS) COURSE TEACHING

Abstract

The work investigates the effect of indirect Gamification in Development and Operations (DevOps) Course teaching. The software development team consisting of multiple contributors coordinates in the collaborative work environment to achieve specific predefined goals in a regulated and controlled fashion. In DevOps Course, the Installation and configuration of the various software tools are useful in the context of application development. To teach DevOps Tools precisely to achieve the learning outcome is a skilled task for a trainer. From the perspective of the learner, the learning environment has to be encouraging and exciting. Pedagogical techniques and ICT tools play an essential role during the knowledge transfer process. The motivation and reward to the Student are essential in achieving the learning outcomes of the Course. The author used the third-party Competition as an indirect Gamification technique to achieve the learning outcomes of the Course. The author encouraged the students to participate in the Hacktoberfest Competition to use the practical skills learned in the Course. The Under Graduate (UG) and Post Graduate (PG) Students have gone through the regular sessions of DevOps. For the participation purpose, both groups of students communicated on one platform. The students who succeeded faster during the GitHub Pull Request (PR) submission shared their experiences with other participants. The PG students participated 68.75% higher than UG students. Minimum of four PR submissions on GitHub and acceptance by the repository maintainer are the task completion criteria. The active participation of the small number of UG students became a motivational factor for the PG students. The Gaussian distribution on the marks obtained by the experimental group shows the absence of outliers. The research shows that the effectiveness of indirect Gamification depends on the age group, level, course content, and learning environment. The participation of a faculty member in the Competition during the learning activity boosts the desire of the Student to complete the task. The experimental group of 15 Students has outperformed in terms of the marks obtained compared to the control group of 52 students.