Abstract
In entrepreneurship education literature it is generally taken for granted that students learn from real world experiences. Yet doing entrepreneurship is no guarantee that learning will occur. Deliberate practice and ensuring that students engage in intense, prolonged and difficult effort is part of moving students from being novices to being sufficiently prepared to engage in venture creation. This raises the questions of how to structure courses to ensure that deliberate practice is a natural outcome of the course. Gamification supports one method that can be used. This article explores students’ reflections on how gamification tools impacted their experiences of learning how to develop an emerging opportunity. The findings suggest that gamification works well in motivating students to engage in deliberate practice. Gamification is not perfect though and raises a number of challenges for educators to consider in designing their courses to achieve the intended outcomes.
Introduction
The discussion around whether entrepreneurship can be taught has largely become obsolete, and the discussion has now shifted focus to how best to ensure students learn from experiences in entrepreneurship education (EE) (Hägg & Gabrielsson, 2019; Hägg & Kurczewska, 2021). While we know that entrepreneurs can learn by transforming experiences into knowledge and competence (Corbett, 2005, 2007; Politis, 2005), simply having experiences or “doing” does not automatically lead to enhanced learning or performance (Nogueira et al., 2022). Empirical data suggests the experience-performance relationship is weak, meaning engaging in entrepreneurial learning experiences simply isn’t sufficient to guarantee later performance (Mayer-Haug et al., 2013). In designing educational experiences it is therefore crucial to think of how to scaffold courses to maximize the chance of learning by doing (Toit, 2019) through more deliberate and systematic learning practice (Dew et al., 2018; Van Gelderen, 2022) in order to improve performance (Neck & Corbett, 2018; Van Gelderen, 2022).
One way to ensure that performance in a domain area improves is through engaging in deliberate practice, which requires individuals to engage in focused repetition at the boundary of their capacities (Ericsson & Charness, 1994). It goes one step further than purposeful practice inrequiring supervision from a trained teacher (Dew et al., 2018). Deliberate practice is difficult by nature and therefore requires significant exertion, especially over prolonged periods (Ericsson & Charness, 1994). It is reasonable to expect that without proper scaffolding students engagement will decrease (Hägg & Kurczewska, 2021; Taber, 2018).
Yet, it is not always clear what deliberate practice looks like in the context of entrepreneurship (Baron & Henry, 2010) and particularly in the context of EE (Chereau & Meschi, 2022; Van Gelderen, 2022). We know that making decisions under uncertainty and developing opportunities are all crucial elements of entrepreneurship (McMullen & Shepherd, 2006), yet exactly how to practice these elements would benefit from greater clarity, specifically how they can be integrated in EE (Hägg & Kurczewska, 2021; Nogueira et al., 2022).
One approach that has received little attention in EE has been the idea to use gamification to improve student engagement (Isabelle, 2020). Gamification is the use of mechanisms and structures from games in real life settings (Antonaci et al., 2015; Hyams-Ssekasi & Taheri, 2022). Gamification is different from simulations, as simulations focus on modeling entrepreneurship in unreal settings (Deterding et al., 2011). Instead, gamification uses gameplay mechanisms like points, levels, scoreboards, status, trophies and rewards in real-life settings to motivate participants (Deterding et al., 2011; Isabelle, 2020).
We hypothesize that gamification can stimulate a more prolonged and focused effort when combined with practice based learning methods in turn leading to improved performance in students. Our research question therefore focusses on whether using game elements implemented in an entrepreneurship course provides scaffolding that supports deliberate practice to enhance students’ learning over a semester. Stated more clearly, How do students perceive gamification in EE that pushes them towards engaging in deliberate practice? In order to explore this research question, we used a phenomenological qualitative approach that emphasizes understanding students’ experience of the entrepreneurial learning process.
Our findings suggest gamification appears to be an effective educational scaffold to ensure students engage in deliberate practice. There are challenges with gamifications like over amplification of quantity versus quality, and generating a sense of competition which can impact negatively class environments, yet gamification holds promise as an approach to ensure that learning occurs from having authentic entrepreneurial experiences. Deliberate practice, gamification and EE are research strands we have rarely seen discussed together and therefore add to an ongoing debate over effective practices for educating future entrepreneurs.
Entrepreneurship Education and Deliberate Practice
In order to achieve expert performance it is insufficient to simply practice something in a mindless manner, instead individuals must engage in deliberate practice (Ericsson, 2006; Ericsson & Charness, 1994). The key difference is that deliberate practice is not necessarily easy or enjoyable, but often at the cognitive boundaries of the individual engaging in the practice (Baron & Henry, 2010). Deliberate practice that leads to outstanding performance derives from intense, prolonged and highly focused effort (Ericsson, 2006) and requires guidance from a skilled teacher (Dew et al., 2018). The goal of deliberate practice is always enhanced performance of specific skillsets.
The concept of deliberate practice has received critique in psychology literature, particularly for definitional inconsistencies throughout Ericsson’s career, and that variance in expertise is not as attributable to deliberate practice as claimed (Hambrick et al., 2020; Macnamara et al., 2014). Across five meta studies reviewing the impact of deliberate practice on expertise, the studies found large amounts of variance in expertise was unexplained, and in nearly all cases this unexplained portion was larger than the amount explained by deliberate practice (Ericsson & Harwell, 2019; Hambrick et al., 2020; Macnamara et al., 2014; Macnamara et al., 2016; Miller et al., 2019). The resulting argument is that nature as well as nurture is crucial in examining expert performance (Hambrick et al., 2020), but for pedagogical purposes we have little influence over the other contextual elements psychology literature cites as being crucial for expert performance. The other heartening insight is that for lower levels of performance such as being “acceptable” or “good” at a skill—the explanatory power of deliberate practice is much higher (Ericsson & Harwell, 2019; Hambrick et al., 2020; Macnamara et al., 2014, 2016; Miller et al., 2019). Which bodes well for the importance of deliberate practice in EE as a method for moving students from novices to “good” or “acceptable” levels of entrepreneurship.
Deliberate practice, as conceived of in more traditional domains like sport or music, has at times been perceived as challenging or not possible for the domain of entrepreneurship (Keith et al., 2016; Unger et al., 2009). It is worth noting that the cited articles were published in the field of psychology, and from their perspective they argued that entrepreneurs engage in a wide variety of behaviors, have little repetition in their tasks, have limited feedback available, operate in dynamic and uncertain environments and are often too busy to engage in deliberate practice. Their approach was therefore to single out entrepreneurial tasks and redefined deliberate practice as the degree to which entrepreneurs engaged in these practices to improve their competencies (Keith et al., 2016; Unger et al., 2009).
Yet in entrepreneurship literature the idea of deliberate practice has been carried across to research with early examples such as from Baron and Henry (2010) who highlights eight features of deliberate practice. A condensed version of these factors of deliberate practice are: (1) It is highly demanding mentally, requiring high levels of focus and concentration. (2) It is designed specifically to improve performance (3) It must continue for long of periods of time—usually upwards of 10 years. (4) It must be repeated. (5) It requires continuous feedback on results. (6) Preperformance preparation is essential. (7) It involves self-observation and self-reflection. (8) It involves careful reflection on performance after practice sessions are completed (Baron & Henry, 2010, pp. 51-52).
More recently Nogueira et al. (2022) found that identifying and developing opportunities was an important skill that nascent entrepreneurs actively practiced. Identifying and developing opportunities are inherent to any new business venturing effort (McMullen & Shepherd, 2006) and is reflected in current models of entrepreneurial learning where developing a business opportunity is at the core of founders do, often repeatedly (Lynch, 2020; Politis, 2005; Ries, 2011).
Yet the role of deliberate practice in relation to EE is still in its nascent stages. One article suggested that having students engage in practicing “asking” for what they needed was a method to develop expertise in a single relevant area (Dew et al., 2018). While, other EE research has seen students identifying single areas of practice for themselves, and designing their own educational interventions (Van Gelderen, 2022), where it is suggested that practice holds the key towards helping students overcome achievement plateaus with the use of student-student coaching. The implication for EE is that students’ skills in developing an opportunity in a new venture can be practiced and improved upon (Corbett, 2005). As Van Gelderen (2022) points out, there has been little discussion in literature on the nuances of educational interventions to support deliberate practice.
One of the core foundations of deliberate practice is that engaging in practice is not “mindless” (Hambrick et al., 2020; Van Gelderen, 2022), yet it’s conceptualization varies in literature At times it is conceived as reflection (Baron & Henry, 2010; Van Gelderen, 2022), while others seem to imply that reflection follows as part of the feedback process (Nogueira et al., 2022) and while other authors make no mention of reflection (Ericsson, 2006). Reviews dedicated to the concept of deliberate practice in psychology literature make no mention of reflection (Hambrick et al., 2020; Macnamara et al., 2016). Trying to ascertain whether the exclusion of reflection is an oversight or was intended would be mere speculation. Ignoring reflection as a concept would be inconsistent with EE literature that has repeatedly highlighted the importance of reflection in generating learning (Haynie et al., 2010; Kubberød & Pettersen, 2017; Lynch & Corbett, 2021; Pocek et al., 2021). We therefore see the need to highlight the importance of reflection both at a collective and individual level in order to improve performance over time (Pocek et al., 2021).
Linking Gamification and Deliberate Practice of Entrepreneurship
Bringing together gamification and deliberate practice of entrepreneurship results in several factors to consider. The first one is what are the key performance domains in which the deliberate practice can occur. Baron and Henry (2010) suggested several key entrepreneurial activities are amenable to expertise acquisition such as: (1) recognizing and evaluating business opportunities; (2) building effective social networks; (3) acquiring essential resources; (4) making effective decisions; and (5) metacognition or self-regulation. We agree with this assessment, which also broadly aligns with existing deliberate practice literature (Dew et al., 2018; Nogueira et al., 2022; Van Gelderen, 2022).
The definition of deliberate practice has taken many forms, with little agreement or consistency over exactly what is meant by deliberate practice (Hambrick et al., 2020). In order for an activity to meet the criteria of being practiced deliberately, it must involve the following elements: (1) activities must be amenable to repeated practice and target performance; (2) individuals must be motivated to improve their performance; (3) feedback on performance must be available (preferably from a trainer or teacher); (4) and the practice must gradually challenge the individual’s current level of performance in a way that mastery can be achieved (Dew et al., 2018; Ericsson et al., 2006; Nogueira et al., 2022). In addition, the implicit element of reflection needs to be included in any conception of how to ensure that learning occurs (Pocek et al., 2021). However, to integrate the above mentioned key domain areas with deliberate practice is challenging to achieve in a student centered learning setting where students are working under minimal instruction, like in typical venture creation pedagogies (Komarkova et al., 2015; Nieswandt, 2017; Toit, 2019). More structure is not necessarily desirable either, given that greater student freedom to define their own learning is associated with more positive learning experiences and outcomes in regards to developing entrepreneurial proactivity (Verzat et al., 2017).
The second factor to consider is how gamification can enhance deliberate practice of performance areas of entrepreneurship in a student setting. The use of gamification has in recent years been somewhat tested as a relevant tool within EE (Antonaci et al., 2015; Isabelle, 2020), but not to our knowledge for the purpose of deliberate practice. Gamification is about the use of game-based principles in situations outside of a game context (Deterding et al., 2011; Isabelle, 2020). The goal is to maximize engagement and maintain motivation for learning over time, and to use elements that inspire students to achieve the desired learning goal (Hyams-Ssekasi & Taheri, 2022). Gamification includes game elements such as points, rules, listing on scoreboards, status, trophies, competition elements and rewards. These are integrated into the educational design to motivate and enhance performance, where the goal is specific behavioral outcomes (Isabelle, 2020). Thus, we argue that gamification through its’ stimulating elements can enhance resilience and motivation for deliberate practice of entrepreneurship, making repeated and challenging performance activities like decision making and opportunity evaluation more fun and enjoyable. We set out to test and explore a gamified venture creation course, where students were challenged over an intensive period of 5 months to practice entrepreneurship in a deliberate and systematic way.
The Case Context—The Gamified Course
The course was run at the Norwegian University of Life Sciences and the course was called “INN340 Entrepreneurship in theory and practice.” This master’s level course was designed to give students an introduction to what entrepreneurship entails in practice. The course’s intellectual forerunners are based on practice-based methods like Lean Startup (Blank & Dorf, 2020), business modeling (Osterwalder & Pigneur, 2010), and effectuation (Sarasvathy, 2008), all methodologies underscoring the deliberate and systematic elements of entrepreneurship.
The pedagogy gives students an opportunity to gain repeated practice in working independently and autonomously in interdisciplinary project teams and they develop a business model, build networks, talk to customers, financiers, and experts. Students present their progress weekly to the class as part of an open discussion. The intention is to develop an idea into a fully-fledged product and/or service and also gain the first customer on board. The students meet weekly in the classroom to present and report progress, get feedback from peer mentors (fellow students on the second year of the master program) and the educators. After completing the course, it is optional whether the students continue with the venture or not.
The course employs a flipped class-room approach integrating a digital and gamified platform which is used to support the practice-based process of developing the start-up projects. The software is used as a collaboration and workflow tool, connecting student teams with educators and mentors. The digital platform combines educational instruction in an easy-to-understand way, creates a structure and provides opportunities for personal purposeful learning (Antonaci et al., 2015; Hyams-Ssekasi & Taheri, 2022).
The platform mainly consists of four applications as artefacts for learning, and the rules of the game are systematically described below:
Methodology
Prior to initiating the research project, a data collection plan was submitted to the Norwegian Social Sciences Data Services (NSD) for approval with all necessary information regarding the collection, processing and storage of data. NSD is the organization responsible for approving data management to ensure it complies with Norwegian rules around data safety. When the plan was approved, we designed an information letter and a consent form for the informants in line with the guidelines of NSD.
The study draws upon a phenomenological, qualitative approach that explores students’ experience of a gamified course where they work as student venture creators. Phenomenology emphasizes “studying the meaning of phenomena and human experiences in specific situations and trying to capture and convey these meanings in empathic and understandable ways” (Berglund, 2007; p. 76). The authors aim to capture the students’ learning stories from their own perspective through semi-structed interviews. The idea is to provide an opportunity for students to share their perspectives even if these do not match with the intentions of the course, and the study design was therefore open to allow discovery of insights that might not have initially appeared obvious to the researchers. The interviews were inspired by the critical incident technique (Cope, 2003) in an attempt to delve into students perspectives with the intention to better understand the learning process from student’s point of view. We conducted a combination of group and individual interviews. A total of 11 in-depth interviews were conducted with students who took this subject in 2021/2022. The selection of interview subjects was driven by two factors; the first was the frequency which the gamified platform had been used. The intention here was to ensure that students were selected for interviews who had actively used the gamification elements and would most likely have been impacted by these elements of the course. This approach is consistent with purposeful sampling (Patton, 1990) where researchers aim to choose the interviews subjects where they anticipate they can learn the most. In using purposeful sampling, the researcher examines specific interests in the phenomenon, selecting cases of some typicality, but leaning towards those cases for which we can learn the most (Stake, 1995). The in-depth interviews provided information rich cases for which we could learn the most from, as opposed to a random sampling of students some of which might have had more team conflicts or made lesser use of the gamified elements which could potentially confound findings. The second selection criteria was access to students, not all students were available or receptive to being interviewed. While a greater number of interviews would have been desirable, the richness of the data collected still provided insights into the gamified course.
The interviews took place over a two and a half week period in February and March 2022 and was jointly carried out by two researchers. The interviews lasted around 1 hour and a semi structured interview guide was used (see appendix 1). While a large number of questions were used here, the students naturally answered some questions in greater details and were briefer in their answers of others. Where answers were vague or unclear follow up questions were often asked.
The interview sample consisted of 18 students who took the gamified course (4 group interviews and 7 individual interviews making for 11 interviews in total). We chose group interviews for two reasons. The first reason is that it is valuable to explore the team’s reflections, as the learning process itself takes place at the team level and the second reason is that group interviews facilitate individuals to build on and help each other reflect on learning experiences, which in turn can create new insights (Silverman, 2014) in a psychologically safe environment of a group. Our experience of group interviews has been that students often build upon each other’s answers providing a greater depth of context than what they might have answered if they had of been interviewed alone. Group interviews were supplemented with the individual interviews to create variety and depth around more personal learning experiences. Some of the interviews took place in physical presence and others were conducted digitally via Teams due to convenience reasons. It was important to recruit teams that had not had too many conflicts, so that experience effects could not be attributed to factors such as personal conflicts or other external and less relevant factors. The interviews were all audio recorded and directly transcribed afterward.
Data Analysis
First, the transcripts were read and discussed among the researchers and openly coded into broad categories identifying evidence of deliberate practice. A deductive content analysis was employed (Patton, 1990) in which the four criteria for deliberate practice (Dew et al., 2018; Ericsson et al., 2006; Nogueira et al., 2022) were employed as the categorization matrix. In this step, one of the researchers analyzed each transcript one by one, to identify incidents; that is specifically did the activities they engaged in meet the definition of deliberate practice, and in which ways the gamification elements contributed. They used colored coding in the original transcripts to highlight the incidences that appeared. This process was then repeated by a second researcher, whereby the original coding was checked for accuracy. Two researchers then searched across transcripts looking for similarities in perceptions and experiences, to extract the main incidences of deliberate practice. In the final step of the analysis, the researchers returned to the initial list of broad categories to confirm and match the content of the performance area analysis to the open coding list. The interviews and analysis were carried out in Norwegian as this is the mother tongue for those involved in these steps, in writing this article the quotes were translated to English by a native Norwegian speaker, and then checked for accuracy by a native English speaker fluent in Norwegian.
Findings
Summary of the Connection Between the Gamified Elements, Deliberate Practice, and Students’ Perspectives.
To help the reader understand the students’ perspectives around each element in the table, we have structured the findings into five subsections, where selected quotes from students highlight how they viewed the gamified elements and the impact this had on their experience of the course.
Activities Must Be Amenable to Repeated Practice and Target Performance
The gamification elements, especially the scoreboard and rules of the game contributed to ensuring that students engaged repeatedly in activities connected to recognizing and evaluating their business opportunities. Specifically, the analysis reveals that students are pushed towards carrying out 100 interviews to establish whether there is product-market fit, clearly targeting performance explicitly. The students had the following perspectives which supports the finding that the gamification created repeated and purposeful practice: [The platform led to] “being able to focus on each individual part of BMC gives you an opportunity to look deeper into an element of a business model, for example who are my customers, and use a week to find out, we think there are customers, but is it true? Is it not true? Are there customer groups we haven’t thought of? [The platform led is] Very positive, helps to put things in order and follow a plan. Helps to get things down on paper, using BMC to note things down.
The core tenant of the game was the repetition of the skills of interviewing potential customers and partners in order to develop their opportunity. Students repeatedly engaged in contacting outside actors. Students mentioned that the teacher pushed this: Showing the statistics on a video display and I think that was actually a good idea, to push us a bit there, even if we are not quite kindergarten children, but sometimes you become one anyway.
This account suggests it was not always fun, but the gamification elements helped push them into the repetitive practice.
In addition, the students mentioned that they spent their time on doing interviews to keep up on the weekly progression on their development of opportunities, but that from the students’ perspective this came at a cost of quality of work. While another student mentioned they liked that they were pushed to practice each week on presenting their opportunity development: It is great practice to have to present. Everyone was much better in the end.
So, there was clearly repetition and progress measurements and the gamification elements contributed to enhance performance.
Individuals Must Be Motivated to Improve Their Performance
There were numerous accounts about the gamification elements like the scoreboard, Team room and transparency of the game leading to motivation, particularly to external motivation: There is also that motivational boost that I talked about when you see the statistics of how many interviews the others have had; [The platform] motivated us to have progression, so without the platform we would probably lose both the competitive aspect and the pressure.
The gamified pedagogy seemed to push and motivate students to work and compete against each other, as being in a game where you are aiming to win leads to sense of competition, and these learning accounts reflect this point: Yes, there is also that motivational boost that I talked about when you see the statistics of how many interviews the others have had and how many videos you have seen, etc. Then you want to do more. The fact that you see how many interviews the other groups have and you want to have just as many interviews yourself and you are somewhat forced to take action then.
The motivational aspect was further strengthened through the social support that was created in the Team room, were students were giving feedback and moral support to each other. This also goes for overcoming initial barriers in contacting and building an effective social network. Many of the students mentioned the network they built, and that they overcame the fear of contacting unknown actors: [The scoreboard] also helped to kick you out of the door a bit.
Thus, in that way this gamification element implemented in a social and transparent environment spurred motivation for reaching outside the classroom to extend and build networks. How the students built on each other and motivated and supported each other in the networking process was also evident: [And not least the fact that you have access to the other [students’] contacts, it's not difficult, if I looked through someone else’s interviews, it wasn't difficult to send a message and say something like “hey, can I use this contact here?” looked at from a network building perspective, it was extremely good.
The gamified course and platform were mostly focused on motivating the initial stages of opportunity development.
Feedback on Performance Must Be Available
Feedback as a topic occupied a lot of space in the interviews and giving feedback was also gamified through weekly rewards. That led to multiple feedback accounts in the Team room and therefore multiple learning opportunities and advice to draw upon in the opportunity development process: Feedback because it gives you insights that you yourself are unable to find out and gives you the opportunity to get input and reflections that either the group or you yourself are not quite able to see at the time.
The data revealed that the students used the Team room and feedback from the class and mentors to calibrate their own decisions: We have no idea what we're going to do, but okay, we're going to present tomorrow as well, then we can get some input, then we can make a decision maybe a little based on what we get as feedback then, so it was actually quite decisive for us.
The fact that feedback was included in a social and transparent interface was highly effective for pivoting, “failing fast” and sped up opportunity development: [We] made a mini pivot every Wednesday due to feedback. Despite a lot of positive feedback, we realized that it wasn’t going to work, this gave rise to a discussion.
Thus, the positive effectives of the feedback pedagogy gave students a perspective about what decisions should be made.
What also comes through in the analysis is that mostly students were referring to feedback from students, and not directly from the teacher. Interestingly, the students were more captivated with feedback from other students than the teacher.
Practice Must Gradually Challenge the Individual’s Current Level of Performance in a Way That Mastery Can Be Achieved
Based on the analysis, the students did not comment that the activities were beyond their capabilities. The complexity of the tasks was considered: “stressful, but absolutely good” and considered “fair” in terms of simulating the realistic aspects of practicing entrepreneurship: The weekly progress has been very good in relation to this time aspect and the real, i.e., the everyday life of an entrepreneur then and a start-up company and where things happen very quickly.
The gamified pedagogy also pushes students to keep up their level of performance and that it was not possible to postpone the learning, once you were in the game, you had to stay in the competition: There was a push to not be a [procrastinator] for better or for worse, I think I could have wished for a rest week—because it was a lot, feeling that you could have an opportunity to pull back a little, feeling the pressure, being able to avoid the pressure.
This learning account signals that the students felt a certain pressure, and we interpreted the students’ perspectives as suggesting that in the beginning many of them were operating on the cusp of their existing comfort zones or boundaries. Yet this changed over the duration of the course, indicating a gradual development of mastery, reflected through this learning account: Now I couldn’t care less and I stand in front of the class and I’m like “no all week I’ve done this and that” it’s like being challenged in that way.
Suggesting that over time they became more comfortable with the rules of the game and the inherent expectations. Moreover, students referred to the value of feedback as being about to help them break out of the plateaus they were on, to reach the next level: We kind of got that feedback on what we were doing and could spin on it if we were a bit stuck and stuff like that.
In relation to the concept of deliberate practice, an emphasis is placed on the fact that it continually challenges the practitioner. If an activity stop being challenging, the result is that instead of being deliberate practice, it ends up being more routine practice of a newly acquired skill. The difference is a reduction in the cognitive benefit for those practicing. While a reduction in challenge shows progression towards mastery, at the same time we wish for students to engage in deliberate practice, there is therefore a need to maintain the difficulty level—a topic we return to in the discussion.
Reflection
While the gamifications element did not specifically design or request a space for reflection and metacognition, this seemed to occur for many of the students as a by-product. The scoreboard and numbers spoke for themselves and made the students take an outsider perspective on themselves and how they could improve their own performance: It’s harder to fool yourself, easy to see what the others are doing, easy to prove that someone is not doing anything.
We infer from this account that the most important aspect of gamification was the transparency it offered allowing for vicarious learning and comparison: You get to be able to reflect a little on what you are doing and that, I don't really like that we say compared, but you could follow the others a little so that you understood, you could get some ideas simply for how one could move forward.
Overall, it seems the students practiced in this domain, but that the gamification elements could be more clearly structured to bring about reflection and a focus on metacognition. Much of the time was spent doing interviews that were not as relevant, needed more time for discussion and reflection, the numerical pressure was there. Should have had so many interviews, took a lot of time, not much time for reflection, should have focused more on that!
Several students also highlighted the ways in which time pressure interfered with the opportunity to reflect.
Discussion on the Use of Gamification in the Educational Setting
Developing an idea through multiple iterations is a crucial part of the entrepreneurial process (Corbett, 2005; Nogueira et al., 2022). The scoreboard and game like nature of the course allowed students to monitor their own progress and the progress of others. As such they appear to have been positively pressured into deliberately practicing the skills that entrepreneurs practice such as seeking out customers and understanding their needs (Nogueira et al., 2022). Suggesting that students were motivated towards engaging in the emotionally challenging and cognitively engaging activities that would meet the definition of deliberate practice (Baron & Henry, 2010). This suggests there were associated improvements in cognition that comes from such practice.
The game elements and course focused on establishing “product market fit”—consistent with the first point suggested by Baron and Henry (2010) as being amenable to practice, which is recognizing and evaluating business opportunities. All courses have boundaries or focus areas, yet one suggested improvement to the course would be to have the gamification elements incentivize students to engage even more in entrepreneurial action, given that action under uncertainty is the basis for entrepreneurship (McMullen & Shepherd, 2006). The students were engaged in “activities” in the sense of contacting and meeting relevant external actors—yet the students did not progress beyond exploring whether there was product-market fit due to the rules not awarding “points” for other activities or steps. The course did not encourage students to practice in depth in the domain of acquiring resources (Baron & Henry, 2010), so future iterations could examine how to assign points or other gamification elements to ensuring that the teams went further in the entrepreneurial process.
Learning from experience tends to be more effective when those engaged in the experience take time to reflect on what they have encountered (Burgoyne, 1995; Hägg & Kurczewska, 2021) and receive feedback (Dew et al., 2018). Students’ emphasized the value of learning from collective in-class feedback sessions which lead them to reflect on their approaches and actions; the feedback they received was a designed element of the game. There is clearly value in engaging collectively in group dialogue to support learning (Baker et al., 2005) and to support learning at the group level (Pocek et al., 2021). This was encouraged through students awarding point to other students each week over who was the best at giving feedback.
One of the findings from students’ perspectives was that they felt there was insufficient time for reflection. They wanted more reflection time, yet also noted the value of the in-class reflection sessions. Simply put, the students desired more time for reflection and discussion within their team (as opposed to in the classroom). There was nothing standing in the way of having students spend more time in their teams reflecting and discussing, yet this was not prioritized in the game’s rules, again highlighting the influence the games rules had on behavior.
Pocek et al. (2021) point out that entrepreneurial learning occurs at multiple levels, both in social situated settings, and at an individual level. This perspective on learning through reflection at an individual level (Kolb, 1984), and at a group level (Burgoyne, 1995) as a concept is also supported in wider literature on experiential learning. Applying these perspectives to the findings it would suggest that there seems to be an opportunity for further developing the games rules to ensure that reflection happens at multiple levels, or in multiple arenas. The current gamification of the course seems to have only created incentives for reflection during class, and leaves reflection at the group and individual level more down to chance.
An alternative explanation was that the process of creating weekly presentations forced students to engage in group level reflection and learning in order to synthesize their prior week’s experiences into a coherent presentation, and that the group level dialogue facilitated learning (Baker et al., 2005) but that the reflection process was “hidden” to them as participants (Kamovich & Longva, 2015). The student reflections highlighted a “blind spot” for us as educators which was obvious in hindsight, but not apparent at the start of the study and suggests an opportunity for making group and individual reflections part of the gamified elements.
The gamified elements resulted in a sense of open competition. The students reported feeling pressure to perform when they saw others results and because of the points-based system. The resulting motivation to perform can be seen as positive in regard to designing EE. Especially with regards to vicarious learning (Bandura, 1997) that occurred due to the incentives of the game. While there are positive benefits in terms of motivation, we also suggest applying caution to competitive elements as recent criticisms of creating a competitive mentality in classrooms have found it can lead to unintended negative effects, such as teams prioritizing results (performance) over learning and mastering; and leads to creating a classroom with winners and losers (Brentnall et al., 2018; Watson & McGowan, 2020). Students mentioned this prioritization of results in their interviews stating that they sometimes focused on quantity of interviews over quality. If gamification leads to students feeling like losers within an education context, then this would be contrary to the intended learning environment we wished to create. Prolonged negative feelings in students have been associated with developing feelings of helplessness (Verzat et al., 2017). No students stated they felt like “losers,” although upon reflection we see the risk that gamifying courses can result in some students feeling like they “lost” even if they engaged in beneficial learning activities. Future research could ideally investigate where such a balance point lies, and in doing so further build on prior valuable research relating to the role of emotions in EE (Lackéus, 2014; Verzat et al., 2017). In addition, future research might wish to consider whether such a heavy focus on being externally motivated through gamification affects the internal motivation of students.
One other critique towards the gamification elements the students went through would be the static like nature of the rules. Deliberate practice requires participants to be at the edge of their cognitive abilities (Dew et al., 2018), as students gain greater tolerance of the ambiguity of being an entrepreneur, their tolerance for this ambiguity likely increases and the frontier of their cognitive abilities shifts outwards (Dew et al., 2018). An ideal gamification set-up would take this shift in cognitive capabilities into account and ensure that students always stayed at their cognitive boundary by increasing the difficulty level. One approach could be to have multiple levels of the game, where students transition from initial challenges to ever more difficult and engaging activities, which is a prerequisite for developing a greater entrepreneurial mindset over time (Crosina et al., 2023). Virtually all digital games have users progress through levels where the challenges and difficulty levels differ. Applied to EE, the result would be a continued progression towards becoming an entrepreneur, while at the same time maintaining the cognitive pressure that deliberate practice requires. This would also transition students from simply recognizing and evaluating opportunities (Baron & Henry, 2010) to engaging in ever more real-world experiences of entrepreneurship (Hägg & Kurczewska, 2021). This would also leave room for students to practice towards acquiring essential resources, which in our opinion was the only domain of Baron and Henry’s (2010) prescribed practice that the gamification did not excel at in the current format.
One of the key positives that gamification seems to have achieved in this course is in having students engage in difficult practice. The difficult nature of ringing external actors and building a network does not have appear to have been “pleasant,” there was no students for whom the course appeared easy (at least not initially, although levels of comfort developed later in the course)—and yet motivation seems to have persisted throughout the course and students stayed engaged. The reason this matters is that cognitive benefits come from engaging in difficult tasks, i.e., deliberate practice (Baron & Henry, 2010). In a world where there is a plethora of easy options for students like app-based food deliveries, streaming services and endless mobile phone based distractions—having students engage in persistent difficult tasks is not a small feat. Gamification seems to have tapped into an appeal for the students in which they enjoyed the challenges associated with the difficult tasks of achieving product market fit.
As entrepreneurship educators, we need to acknowledge that we are also experimenting with students and their emotions (Kubberød & Pettersen, 2017; Neergaard et al., 2021; Verzat et al., 2017). When designing deliberate practice that is at the boundaries of their capacity, we must also be cognisant of the students’ emotional experiences, as it is entirely possible to gamify courses in ways that lead to overwhelm or stress. In designing emotional learning experiences (Lackéus, 2014), we inherently adopt some responsibility for the emotional responses of students. Teachers’ responsibility in pushing students to their cognitive boundaries is a topic we have seldom seen explored, and in the realm of gamification could be linked to ensuring that students engage in deliberate practice at the “level” they find suitable. The threat with allowing students to choose where to practice is that they may simply choose the easiest or unchallenging levels. As teachers we might be inclined to push them further beyond what the students themselves see as their own boundaries. It is possible that many students are unaware of their own boundaries and in being pushed might end with an increased sense of mastery and confidence in their capacity. Yet, suggesting that we know better than students where their boundaries lie comes with the risk that we ignore students and push them beyond their capacity. Any suggestions that teachers “know best” and that students should “trust us” raises a sense of alarm for us personally. The discussion around responsibility for negative outcomes in EE is woefully underexplored, as well as in gamified contexts.
Conclusion and Implications
This gamified pedagogical approach presented is relatively unique and represents an additional contribution in the academic conversation around deliberate practice in EE. The article posed the following question: How do students perceive gamification in EE that pushes them towards engaging in deliberate practice? The results showed that the gamification elements led to students engaging in deliberate practice in the challenging and difficult domain of recognizing and evaluating an opportunity. While all courses have boundaries, we suggest that future courses or research could focus on gamification design in EE that pushes students towards later steps in the entrepreneurial process.
Gamification seems to have created motivation to actively engage in opportunity development; however, students also mentioned the desire for a greater empathises on reflection and discussions within their own groups. While the course did not prevent such reflection or discussions, the gamifications did not incentivize it either. The implication is that careful thought needs to be given to the incentives that are created within the learning environment when using gamification, as it would be easy to create unintended consequences.
The gamification elements also resulted in a sense of competition, again which can positively impact student motivation through providing external motivation. We are unsure of the impact on students’ internal motivation and also caution again the potential negative consequences of competition in classrooms, which have been associated with students feeling like winners and losers. The implication being that mindful gamification of courses needs to consider the social implications.
One core critique of this gamified course is the static like nature of the rules; these could be modified to have students’ progress through differing levels of difficulty, similar to the way that video games have differing levels of difficulty. Students should be constantly pushed to their boundaries to ensure that the practice remains deliberate and does not slip back into simply routine repetition, and this requires that courses increase in difficulty as students get better at the initial stages.
In addition, we highlight the risk that gamification courses might have unintended negative emotional consequences. We suggest that future research could explore the conundrum of teacher-responsibility in relation to emotional wellbeing of students when gamification might lead to negative stress and pressure in EE. We are skeptical to the idea that teachers will always know best how to push students to the frontiers of their abilities. Students won’t always know their boundaries, but neither do we.
Lastly, the study provides further nuance to a growing conversation about the importance of designing EE for deliberate practice to occur and shows that gamification can be a useful pedagogical tool to ensure that students engage in deliberate practice especially in a world that is often filled with competing distractions and easy alternatives.
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Ethical Statement
Semi Structured Interview Guide
The interview guide below was originally in Norwegian and has been translated using the free online service ChatGPT 3.5. All translations involve an element of interpretation when recreating text in a secondary language; the authors are of the opinion that this automated translation closely matches the intended questions in the original language.