Evaluation of awarding badges on Student’s engagement in Gamified e-learning systems

Abstract

Gamification has been gaining increasing acceptability in recent times in educational and commercially related activities, as a tool that encourages and improves the motivation of digital native learners. Since learners can easily engage, educationists have explored gamification as a tool for remediation of engagement, motivation, and collaboration. However, the literature showed that the structural and contextual deployment of game elements is defined only partially in practice. Subsequently, gamification success and failure factors should be explored to identify the required enhancement to achieve improved efficiency in current systems. This research extracts the relevant aspects of gamification that need due consideration to make a guided choice through existing theories. This study is based on an online gamified study that uses well-founded concepts in teaching and evaluation of students in a university. Although badges earned and time spent indicated an increase in engagement, the results show that further work needs to be done by incorporating feedback elements, social interaction, and interactive guidance. The underlying impression is that timely, frequent feedback and personalized guidance, avenues for collaboration and interactivity need to be explored towards the better utility of gamification. Therefore, learning culture in the current learner-centered environment should be further studied to infuse better productivity.

Innovation in project management education - let’s get serious!

“…Höllig, Tumasjan, and Welpe (2020) studied leaderboard design related to the role of competitiveness in learning. Further, Imran (2019) showed a positive relationship between digital badges and student engagement in gamified e-learning systems. Such technical aspects of gamification and serious games, although imperative, are beyond the scope of this study.…”

“…Digital badges, leaderboards, and scoring points have become prominent in gamification (Mekler, et al, 2017). Adding gamification elements can improve motivation and engagement (Imran, 2019;Özhan and Kocadere, 2020). Gamification elements are used in consumer energy consumption applications to reduce consumption and foster sustainability (Mulcahy, Russell-Bennett and Iacobucci, 2020), smart cities to reduce traffic (Cellina, et al, 2020), marketing applications to increase customer commitment, willingness to pay, and to provide customer referrals (Wolf, Weiger and Hammerschmidt, 2020).…”

Do Badges Increase Student Engagement and Motivation?

“…Abramovich et al [5] studied the effect of merit and achievement badges, used in an intelligent tutor for teaching mathematics to middle-school students. In contrast, Imran [7] used badges for gamifying a learning environment, helping students prepare for entrance exams to higher education institutions. Kyewski and Krämer [14] studied the impact of badges awarded for performance of specific activities within a graduate-level elearning seminar on Computer-mediated Communication.…”

“…Most of the published empirical studies focused on investigating whether badges improve the students' engagement in the gamified activities and/or their academic achievements and as already pointed with contradicting results. Most of the authors, e.g., Hakulinen et al [13], Denny [20], Huang and Hew [19], Zainuddin [11], Imran [7], and Anderson et al [21] have found a positive effect of badges on student actions and on students' engagement with the gamified activities (practicing, question answering, online participation, out-of-class work). Concerning the student performance (course grades), some reported that the use of badges led to better student performance on the tests [11], to a reduced failing rate [13], or encouraged students to produce higher quality work [19].…”

“…As a common game mechanics, the potential effects of badges have been studied in various educational contexts [3]. These include the effect of badges on student engagement, participation, performance, and competition ( [5], [6], [7], [8]), the impact of badges on course completion [9], and their effect on students behavior in computer science courses [10]. While the findings are generally positive, several studies report contradicting results [11].…”