Uso de gamification para motivar alunos de graduação a contribuir com projetos de software livre

Abstract

Context: The Open Source Software development model has changed the way that software is built, extending the development process for a large number of volunteers. It is known that the onboarding of newcomers is difficult, because to contribute to a project it is necessary to overcome a number of barriers. Currently, undergraduate students in the area of computing show interest (and sometimes are motivated) to contribute to open source. However, the students do not do it due to lack of motivation to overcome the barriers encountered. As a result, several studies have been conducted with the objective of engaging, attracting and motivating developers to open source projects. Objective: Considering the potential of undergraduate students in contributing to open source projects, the objective of this work is to verify if the use gamification elements motivate undergraduate students of Computer Science to contribute to open source software projects. Method: After identifying the elements of game design used to motivate the students, rules were defined for each element. Such rules have been implemented in the environment GitLab. To assess the elements, a study was conducted into the classroom, with 17 students, using a real open source software project (JabRef). At the end of the study, the students evaluated their experience through a structured questionnaire. Results: The questionnaire answers showed that the element Quest had a good performance. The Point element also showed good results, the best ratings were in fact of the element help give feedback as the actions performed by users. The other elements (ranking and levels) had not presented good results. In summary, the gamified environment helped the students in an attempt to make a contribution. Conclusions:Gamification can motivate and support newcomers onboarding to open source projects. In particular, elements Quest and Point, which proved to be adequate to assist newcomers to overcome barriers of lack of guidance and feedback, besides being motivator. Thus, we propose that communities take advantage of using Quests and points to support the first steps of potential new members.