Team Formation using Character-based Gamification: Effects on Online Teamwork Experience During COVID-19

Due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, higher education institutions have been forced to shut down physical classes and shift to online lessons. This has presented many new challenges for lecturers and students, especially for online interactions and working remotely in teams which is not an uncommon practice in design and media industry. This study investigates how the use of character-based gamification for design team formation can help lecturers to address the problems of teamwork among design and media students as well as the new emerging challenges in online collaborative environments. In this gamified learning intervention, the personality, roles and abilities of students’ chosen game characters were used by the lecturers as references and insights to form teams for collaborative design projects. The data for the study is based on the teamwork experiences of 47 design and media students at a tertiary arts institution in Singapore. These students undertook team projects in no character assigned teams, random characters assigned teams, and characters matched teams assigned by matching students with the personalities, roles, and abilities of their chosen game characters. The results indicate that students’ perception of online teamwork experience was most positive when working in teams matched with game characters. This study contributes recommendations for higher education lecturers on guidelines and procedure for team formation in ways that positively increase teamwork quality, student motivation, and enjoyment in online team projects.