The effect of gamification on students engagement: A preliminary study

Abstract

The use of game elements and mechanics in a non-game context, gamification, is being applied in both academia and industries in recent years. However, the evaluation process to recognize the benefits and limitations of using this concept in education still requires further investigation. This paper aims to investigate the effect of the gamification element on student behavioral engagement in an online course. A leaderboard plugin was developed and deployed in a Learning Management System (LMS). To investigate the effect, a quasi-experimental design was used with 48 students, in the middle school's computer course in Saudi Arabia. The effect of the leaderboard plugin was compared to those without a gamification plugin in the same educational setting. Initial findings indicate that the gamified online course presents better results than the traditional online course. © © 2020 for this paper by its authors. Use permitted under Creative Commons License Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0).

Keywords

Author Keywords

Gamification Student engagement E-learning K-12 Game-Element Leaderboard

Index Keywords

E-learning Curricula Students Saudi Arabia Gamification Educational settings middle school Game elements Learning management system Online course Plug-ins

Author Affiliations

Information Systems Department, King Abdulaziz University, Jeddah, Makkah Province, Saudi Arabia

Funding & Acknowledgements

No funding information

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The effect of gamification on students engagement: A preliminary study

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