CONCEPTUAL AND CATEGORICAL APPARATUS OF GAMIFICATION APPLICATION IN THE EDUCATIONAL PROCESS

Abstract

The introduction of gamification in higher education institutions has been becoming increasingly widespread since the beginning of the twenty-first century, due to a number of relevant reasons, including: the change of traditional textual culture to digital, the emergence of alternative digital learning tools, changes in the ways of assessing educational outcomes, the spread of new educational ethics and aesthetics, etc. Systematizing, generalizing, and organizing the modern conceptual and categorical apparatus of gamification in the educational process is the purpose of the study, the results of which are presented in the article. Among the theoretical methods used in the study, the priority was given to the system-analytical method of studying philosophical, psychological and pedagogical sources. As an additional method, the method of scientific modeling was used to illustrate the ordering of the main categories and to create a structural and functional model of future physical education teachers' readiness to use gamification. As a result of the study, the basic definition is the recently accepted understanding of gamification as the use of game elements and game mechanics in a non-game context. Gamification in education is defined as the introduction of game design elements and game experience into the learning process. The use of gamification in the educational process is proposed to be understood as the creation of a common game environment for the implementation of the educational process, which results in the effectiveness of achieving educational goals by increasing motivation to the content of educational activities. Based on the analysis of publications by Ukrainian researchers, the article reveals general and specific issues of gamification in education, distinguishes between the understanding of the concept of gamification in broad and narrow meanings, names the actual areas of gamification of education: development and implementation of educational games and application of game techniques and mechanics for educational purposes, proves that «gaming» and «gamification» are interchangeable verbal expressions of the concept that have definitions of the same content. The difference between gamification and game is determined by analyzing the works of foreign scholars, where these concepts are distinguished: through the construction of antinomies “game – fun”, “whole – parts”; through the space of game concepts along the vertical axis “goal – entertainment”, horizontal axis “absence of gameplay – presence of gameplay”. The conceptual and categorical apparatus of gamification in the educational process is represented by a scheme that summarizes the following concepts: game components, game mechanics, game dynamics, non-game context – educational content, game aesthetics/design, typology of participants in the gamified educational process.