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

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.