Gamification to avoid cognitive biases: An experiment of gamifying a forecasting course

Nikoletta-Zampeta Legaki, Kostas Karpouzis, Vassilios Assimakopoulos and Juho Hamari

Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 2021, vol. 167, issue C

Abstract: In their daily lives, people are confronted with situations where they need to form a schema of possible future scenarios and the likelihood of them occurring, be it about climate change, economic up- or downturn, or even the potential success of a romantic date. Be these issues of mundane or universal importance, this judgmental forecasting poses people with a difficult pervasive cognitive challenge. Commonly, judgmental forecasting is taught in forecasting courses syllabi, and the pedagogy surrounding it is challenging. However, gamification and game-based learning have risen as promising tools to simulate different kinds of scenarios and stimulate cognitive problem solving. This study investigates the effects of a gamified application with points, levels, challenges, storytelling and leaderboard for teaching judgmental forecasting by conducting a 2×2 between-subjects experiment (treatments: i) read: yes vs no, and ii) gamification: yes vs no), with a sample of 285 students of a School of Electrical and Computer Engineering and a Business Administration Department. The findings indicate that the gamified application improved learning outcomes regarding the heuristics and biases that affect judgmental forecasting by almost 15%, supporting the use of gamification in forecasting education.

Keywords: Forecasting; Judgment Bias; Teaching; Gamification; Decision Making; Education (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:tefoso:v:167:y:2021:i:c:s0040162521001578

DOI: 10.1016/j.techfore.2021.120725

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