Use of Digital Games in Writing Education: An Action Research on Gamification

Abstract

The aim of the study is to determine the contribution of gamification to writing skills ofmiddle school students. For this study, a lesson plan has been developed to relate Writingand Authorship Skills lesson to the gamification for middle school students. From this lessonplan, it was tried to determine the effectiveness of the teaching process. Therefore, thestudy was designed as action research. The research group is composed of seventh gradestudents. Criteria sampling technique was used to determine the participants. As a datacollection tool, student diary, semi-structured interview form, semi-structured observationform, digital content of the students were used. Data obtained from the semi-structuredinterview form were analyzed by content analysis; other data were analyzed by descriptiveanalysis. Writing skills and gamification were related in the study. Turkish LanguageTeaching Program (2018) has been taken into consideration in the action plan which relatesto gamification and writing skill. As a result of the study, it was seen that all participantswere actively involved in the implementation process. In addition, it was concluded thatgamification increased the interest of students towards the course, combined school andnon-school life, facilitated classroom management, supported collaborative work, anddeveloped creativity. As a result of this study, it is suggested that digital games can be usedas a text type in Turkish language lessons with the method of gamification in order topositively affect motivation of the middle school students toward writing education.