Classroom Attention Restoration Using Computer Game Rewarding Mechanism

The loss of students' attention is a universal problem in classroom teaching. Especially in the digital era, students may quickly shift their attention from the class to other distractions such as smartphones and laptops. In this paper, we analyze the psychological causes of the attention loss problem and explore a new approach to restore students' attention level in classroom teaching. We borrow the attention locking mechanism from computer games and design a timely rewarding system to stimulate the students in class. When the students are repetitively stimulated by the lecturer, their attention would be tied to what the lecturer present in the class. We build an experimental system using wechat mini program technology. During a class, the students are asked to use their smartphones to scan QR codes appearing on the projector screen from time to time. Each scan will reward students with a fraction of the class participation points and lead the students into a preset teaching scenario such as attendance checking, random questioning, and quiz. Just like the ladder ranking system widely used in online computer games, students can see their ranking of accumulated participation points after class as a long term stimuli for study. We tested the proposed teaching approach in two courses with relatively large number of students. The experiment results show that both the student attendance and their attention level remain high for the entire semester.