ZEMCH 2015 - International Conference Proceedings | Page 677

The students were given the role of a facilities manager whose aim is to “fix” different areas of the
building in the best possible way, within the costraints of an allocated budget.
The rules of the game were:
• The budget was approximately a quarter of what would be required to fix the entire building,
and hence the students were required to prioritise the areas with the greatest percentage of
failure. The students were awarded points based on the percentage of actual failure of an area.
For example, if they decided to fix an area that failed to reach the required temperature 75% of
the time, they would be awarded 75 points.
• The cost to fix each area was proportional to its surface (based on area categorisations), and
the points awarded were also similarly proportional (if an area was four times as large as the
base area category, and it failed 75% of the time, the student would be awarded 75 x 4 = 300
points). Effectively, the requirement of the game was for students to identify which areas performed worse, and prioritise them accordingly.
• In the pilot study, areas were also given “importance” coefficients based on their use. So, corridors were awarded a multiplier of 0.1 (10% of points), secondary spaces a multiplier of 0.5 (50%
points) and office spaces and classrooms a multiplied of 0.5.
• Penalty points were applied to students who went over budget that negated any benefit from
breaking the rule.

The total sum of the points followed the equation below:
P=ixaxF
where:

P is the points awarded
i is the importance of the area (0.0 to 1.0)
α is the area factor (1 to 8)
F is the failure rate of the space (0 to 100)

The workshop was part of a taught module. As an incentive to commit to the game, the student
that won the most points would be given additional marks in a related summative assignment
for the module.

Pilot Workshop Results and Redesign
A pilot workshop was run at a UK University with 8 first-year students enrolled on a BA in Architectural Technology programme. The students executed both parts of the game and completed
a questionnaire with their views.
The results of the pilot workshop were inconclusive. When using EnViz, students performed generally better, however, in both cases most students were heavily penalised for going over budget.
Also, some students appeared to ignore completely the importance factor of a space and concentrated on circulation spaces. Thus it was difficult to gauge how effective each method was with
regard to response time.
Qualitative feed provided via questionnaires and informal chats after the experiment generally
suggested that the students preferred to work with the 3D model than with spreadsheets (de-

Using gamification to enhance understanding of building performance

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