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Learning and engagement in a gamified course: I nvestigating the effects of student characteristics
Author(s) -
Davis K.,
Sridharan H.,
Koepke L.,
Singh S.,
Boiko R.
Publication year - 2018
Publication title -
journal of computer assisted learning
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.583
H-Index - 93
eISSN - 1365-2729
pISSN - 0266-4909
DOI - 10.1111/jcal.12254
Subject(s) - psychology , student engagement , perception , recreation , mathematics education , course (navigation) , variety (cybernetics) , educational technology , informatics , pedagogy , medical education , computer science , engineering , medicine , electrical engineering , neuroscience , artificial intelligence , political science , law , aerospace engineering
The current study investigated college students' experiences of a gamified informatics course. We surveyed 139 students aged 18–31 years ( M = 20 years, SD = 1.5) enrolled in an undergraduate informatics course focused on social networking technologies. Surveys were conducted at 3 time points during the course (beginning, middle, and end). Overall, we found positive trends with respect to 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, we did uncover one notable difference with respect to how students' gaming frequency impacted their engagement in the course. Nongamers expressed somewhat less motivation to do well in the course than frequent gamers. For all other measures of engagement, however, nongamers appeared to be equally engaged by the gamified format of the course as gamers. There were virtually no differences between male and female students' perceptions of gamification. This study contributes new insight into the conditions under which gamification succeeds or fails in educational settings. These insights will be useful to designers and instructors of gamified learning environments as they seek to engage and support a variety of learners.