Title: Learning and engagement in a gamified course: Investigating the effects of student characteristics
Author Name: Melissa Sizemore
Selected Case (Published Article):
Davis, K., Sridharan, H., Koepke, L., Singh, S., & Boiko, R. (2018). Learning and engagement in a gamified course: Investigating the effects of student characteristics. Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, 34(5), 492-503.
https://doi.org/10.1111/jcal.12254
1. Introduction
This paper explored the experience of college students enrolled in an undergraduate informatics course based on social networking technologies. Increased interest in using game elements in nongame settings such as business, the military, and education to promote participation and skill development (Squire, 2008). Known as gamification (Deterding, Dixon, Khaled, & Nacke, 2011), this phenomenon is becoming increasingly popular in higher education, where experience points (XP), quests, leaderboards, and badges are replacing—or in some cases, augmenting—assignments, tests, and grades (Toyama, 2015). The logic behind gamification is to harness the elements of games that underlie their massive success to make learning more engaging, customizable, and personally relevant (Gee, 2007, 2008).
2. Overview of the Case
The study had 144 students enrolled in the Informatics course during Winter 2015. Students ranged in age from 18 to 31 years (M= 20 years, SD= 1.5) and were roughly divided equally concerning gender, 36% female. This study occurred at a large public university in the Northwest United States. The course was in its fifth iteration at the time of the study. The course introduced students to technological, social, and informational aspects of information systems. It focused on social networking technologies, exploring popular social networks, gaming applications, and messaging applications, as well as their social implications and information structure. The course was designed for first- and second-year students without a background in this subject. It aimed to introduce students to information systems’ technological, social, and informational aspects.
All enrolled students were encouraged to take an anonymous survey three times during the ten-week quarter, beginning, middle, and end. The surveys asked questions about students’ prior knowledge of and experience with gamification; frequency of recreational gameplay; self‐identification as a nongamer, casual gamer, or avid gamer; and attitudes toward the course. Not all students completed all three surveys, with 132 students taking the first survey, 115 completing survey two and 86 completing survey three. In all, 81 students completed all three surveys.
The study’s conductors used two approaches to classify students’ recreational gameplay. In the first approach, students were grouped according to the number of hours they spent playing games per week. The study drew on previous work and recent statistics on young adults’ game-playing patterns (Duggan, 2015; Entertainment Software Association, 2015; Kirman & Lawson, 2009) to identify the following categories: nonplayers (0 hr. per week), light players (1–9 hr. per week), and heavy players (10 or more hours per week). Fifteen students (12%) were classified as nonplayers, 80 students (62%) were classified as light players, and 34 students (26%) were classified as heavy players. In the second approach, the study grouped students according to whether they self-identified as a nongamer (8 students, 6%), casual gamer (38 students, 29%), or avid gamer (83 students, 64%) of any game. These two classification methods allowed those conducting the study to distinguish between time spent playing video games and personal identification with gaming.
3. Solutions Implemented
As noted in the overview, the study was conducted over ten weeks. The course was divided into a Big Class led by the instructor and a Small Class led by one of six undergraduate teaching assistants. Students attended the Big Class once a week, where they engaged in an enthusiasm-generating activity that combined play, high interactivity, and learning. They participated in a Small Class twice a week, taking quizzes, peer-evaluating each other’s work, and performing activities designed to bolster the course material. The class activities were organized into five types of accomplishments: Learners, Speakers, Thinkers, Builders, and Writers. All student work, from tests to activities to class participation, carried a certain number of XP. Student grades were calculated based on how much XP they accumulated throughout the course.
As noted, students were encouraged to complete anonymous surveys three times during the quarter.
4. Outcomes
The paper breaks down the results and findings from three research questions.
RQ1: What are students’ attitudes towards and experiences of a gamified undergraduate course?
RQ1a. Do differences exist across gaming frequency, gamer identification, and gender?
The study’s conductors examined changes in students’ attitudes towards the gamified format of the course between the beginning and end of the quarter. Students’ preferences for taking the class with or without the gamified format, including their open-ended responses explaining their preferences, were also examined. Students maintained a positive attitude towards the gamified format of the course between the start and end of the quarter (see Figure 1). At the beginning of the course, 58% (76/132) of student survey respondents said they were generally enthusiastic or very enthusiastic about the gamified format of the course. An additional 23% (30/132) of respondents said they were neutral, 18% (24/132) reported having some doubts, and only 1.5% (2/132) reported having solid doubts. These attitudes remained essentially unchanged by the end of the course, where 53% (46/86) of survey respondents said they liked or loved the gamified format, 22% (19/86) said they had no strong opinion, 16% (14/86) said they disliked it, and 8% (7/86) said they hated it.
RQ2: To what extent does gamification contribute to students’ perceived learning and achievement?
RQ2a. Do differences exist across gaming frequency, gamer identification, and gender?
For RQ2, after examining students’ general attitudes towards the gamified format of the course, the study looked more specifically at students’ perceptions of how gamification impacted their learning, achievement, and levels of engagement in the course. To determine gamification’s influence on learning and achievement, student responses to survey questions asking whether students thought that gamification supported their understanding of the course material, whether they thought gamification made it easier or harder to do well in the course, and whether they thought their grade would be higher or lower without gamification were examined.
In response to whether they thought the gamified format of the course supported their learning of the course material, 61% of students (53/87) said they felt they learned more with gamification, 23% of students (20/87) said they would have learned more without gamification, and 16% (14/87) said that gamification did not affect how much they learned. There were no statistically significant differences across gender, gaming frequency, or gamer identification. Students were asked to explain their reasoning in an open-ended follow-up question. To clarify how gamification helped support learning, one student commented: “I feel like I learned a lot more because I was interested, and also the fact that I knew what I had to do to do well motivated me to get everything I need done.” Another student said: “I liked being able to learn at my own pace and in unique ways.” Of the students who felt that gamification did not support their learning, one wrote: “Gamification incentivized doing as much as possible to get points at a breakneck pace that sacrificed the reflection necessary for learning.” Similarly, another student commented: “[I] felt like I had to ‘jump through the hoops’ to gain XP [rather] than really learning the material.” A student who felt that gamification had no impact on his learning said: “I still treated this as a normal class in that I did my best to learn the material.”
Overall, students were most likely to report that gamification made it easier to do well in the course (44%, 38/87 students agreed). Only 21% (18/87) said that gamification made it harder to do well. Concerning how gamification impacted their final grade, 41% of students (36/87) thought their grade would be lower without gamification, 22% (19/87) thought their grade would be higher, and 37% (32/87) thought their grade would be the same.
RQ3: To what extent does gamification influence students’ engagement in the course material and ideas?
RQ3a. Do differences exist across gaming frequency, gamer identification, and gender?
To explore gamification’s impact on student engagement, the study examined students’ responses to survey questions about their enjoyment of different gamified activities and experiences and their fun and motivation compared with other non-gamified courses. In the mid-quarter survey, students were asked how much they enjoyed the following four gamified activities:
Compete with others in challenges,
Collaborate and socialize,
Express yourself creatively, and
Explore the game world and options.
Collaboration emerged as the most engaging activity, with 61% of respondents (70/115) reporting that they liked or loved it. The competition was the least engaging of the four activities, with only 43% of respondents (49/115) reporting that they liked or loved competing with others. Approximately half of respondents said they liked or loved the opportunity to express themselves creatively (53%) and explore the game world (51%).
At the end of the quarter, students were asked how much they enjoyed the gamified course compared with other non-gamified courses at their university. Two-thirds of the students (58/87) said they found the course more enjoyable than other courses they had taken at the university, compared with 22% (19/87) who said it was less enjoyable and 11% (10/87) who said they experienced the same level of enjoyment as other courses. In response to whether they thought the gamified format made the course more interesting/fun versus boring, 53% of students (46/87) said that gamification made the course more interesting/fun. In contrast, only 14% (12/87) said that it made the course more boring.
Students were also asked to reflect on whether they had extra motivation to do well in the gamified course compared with their other non-gamified courses. Overall, 48% of students (41/85) said they had extra incentive to do well in the gamified course, 26% (22/85) said they had equal motivation, and 27% (23/85) said they had less motivation.
5. Implications
The current study adds new insight into the impact of gamification in higher education contexts by exploring students’ experiences of a gamified informatics course at three-time points during the course. Overall, the study found positive trends concerning students’ perceptions of gamification’s impact on their learning, achievement, and engagement in the course material. Although students who played and identified variously with recreational games were more alike than not, the study uncovered one notable difference concerning how students’ gaming frequency impacted their engagement in the course. In contrast, the study found virtually no gender differences. These findings provide new evidence relating to individual characteristics’ impact on students’ gamification experiences.
References
Deterding, S., Dixon, D., Khaled, R., & Nacke, L. (2011). From game design elements to gamefulness: Defining “gamification.” Proceedings of the 15th International Academic MindTrek Conference, 9– 15.
Duggan, M. (2015). Gaming and gamers. Washington, DC: Pew Research Center. Retrieved from http://www.pewinternet.org/2015/12/15/gaming-and-gamers/
Entertainment Software Association (2015). The 2015 essential facts about the computer and video game industry. Entertainment Software Association (ESA).
Gee, J. P. (2008). Learning and games. In K. Salen (Ed.), The ecology of games: Connecting youth, games, and learning (pp. 21– 40). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Kirman, B., & Lawson, S. (2009). Hardcore classification: Identifying play styles in social games using network analysis. Lecture Notes in Computer Science (including Subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics), 5709, 246– 251.
Squire, K. D. (2008). Video games and education: Designing learning systems for an interactive age. Educational Technology, 48(2), 17– 26.
Toyama, K. (2015). The looming gamification of higher. The Chronicle of Higher Education, 62(10).