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In spite of the unprecedented popularity to use innovative gaming concepts within the educational context in order to promote active learning, engage people and solve motivational problems, there is an emerging body of research work arguing that gamification is not effective to increase neither the students engagement nor the learning outcomes. In this research paper, an empirical study is conducted to explore how gamification can firstly affect the student learning engagement and the interactivity level with e-learning technologies. Secondly, whether it can be considered as a driving thrust to support sustained learning. A question board is designed and implemented to enable students ask and answer questions related to their taught modules where academic staff can also contribute and validate the most correct answers. The acquisition of data is performed through a period of 10 months in order to investigate the gamification impact over time. The gamified platform was integrated with the online e-learning portal of a university where the adoption of e-learning is considered extremely poor. The obtained results have revealed that gamification can be considered as a valuable tool to entice users for the uptake of educational systems and increase their interactivity and engagement.

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Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explore the relationship between the perceived performance, software usability, and attitude of academics to use online technology to perform their tasks in the academic context. Design/methodology/approach The paper assesses the acceptance and utilization of university lecturers for an online educational system using the technology-to-performance chain model. The evaluation process is conducted via an online survey which is administered to 180 university staff meanwhile objective measurements describing the actual utilization are considered during the analysis. Partial least squares path modeling is used in this study in tandem with other statistical methods to test the significance and influence of different constructs and factors related to the user. Findings The usability of information systems plays a crucial role compared to the attitude and social norms for lecturers to actually utilize technological products. Meanwhile, the TTF is observed to have more influence than the actual utilization for the perceived impact on performance. For the individual’s characteristics, the study indicates that the age is an influential factor on the utilization and performance in contrast to the gender which has a marginal impact. Originality/value The study describes a model to assess the acceptance of technology by academics based on combining self-reported data and objective quantitative measures which describe the actual utilization of the user. Further, the usability estimated using the well-known System Usability Scale is integrated within the developed model to reflect the ease of use for technology. Further, covariate analysis is conducted to explore how different types of users interact and react to educational systems for different factors including age, gender, academic qualifications and experience.