Gamifying the Project in Hardware-based Courses

Using elements of games in non-gaming systems is known as gamification. It has recently been used in many areas to improve some processes, for example, it facilitates the teaching and learning. Students understand some learning objectives more easily when they play games in which they are challenged with rivalry factors and can collaborate more with one another. This paper presents a new approach of gamifying the practical project in the hardware-based course "Microprocessors and Micro-controllers" for computer science students. This change has significantly improved the course - not only that it has improved the average grade of the passed students, but it provoked the students to enroll in other hardware courses of the upper semesters. Even more so, some diploma theses involving microcontrollers were developed for the first time.