Gamification in education primarily aims at increasing learners’ motivation to engage in given learning activities and thereby promote desired learning behaviors. Despite its potential and the increasing number of gamified systems their success is still limited due to the fact that gamifying learning is a challenging process. Part of the challenge stems from an insufficient understanding of the motivational mechanisms of gamification on learners’ experience and from the insufficient attention to factors contributing to gameful experiences and promoting sustainable engagement. In addition, there is limited empirical evidence on motivational influences driving students to participate in gamified learning activities. Another factor slowing down the progress of successfully gamified applications is the scarcity of tools that would enable instructors to design and implement gamified activities as part of their instructional strategy. In an attempt to address these challenges, the present paper examines the difficulties inherent in the gamification of educational activities and how the OneUp gamification platform can support instructors in overcoming them with the mechanisms it provides for affording gameful experiences and sustainable engagement. To add to the understanding of the motivational influences towards gamified learning activities, the paper presents a preliminary study of student motivation to use OneUp for out-of-class practicing in a gamified Data Structures course. The outcomes of this study are based on data collected through a focus group, survey data, and system logs.
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Motivators Matter When Gamifying Learning Activities
Gamification, the use of game design elements in non-game contexts, has become a promising strategy for enhancing learners’ motivation, engagement, and performance. However, our understanding of how the motivational affordances of gamification interact with the motivational drivers engendered by a learning activity is still limited. In most of the studies the focus is on the role of the incorporated gamification elements, disregarding motivational factors associated with the learning activity, such as perceived utility, expectancy of success, and needed effort to complete it. Expectancy-Value model offers a practical method for estimating the level and quality of learners’ motivation towards a particular task as it accounts for both intrinsic and extrinsic motivators. Employing this model can shed a new light on the motivational potential of educational gamification. Accordingly, in this paper we present experiments with Expectancy-Value-Cost scale (EVC) as an instrument for estimating the level of students’ motivation towards a gamified learning activity. We studied empirically how the motivational factors measured by EVC relate to the level of learners’ engagement in gamified practicing and assessed their predictive qualities.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1821189
- PAR ID:
- 10473111
- Editor(s):
- Auer, M.E.; Pachatz, W.; Rüütmann, T.
- Publisher / Repository:
- Springer: Lecture Notes in Networks and Systems book series
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- 25th International Conference on Interactive Collaborative Learning (ICL2022)
- Volume:
- 633
- ISBN:
- 978-3-031-26875-5
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 947–958
- Subject(s) / Keyword(s):
- Educational gamification Expectancy-value model Motivational design
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Conference Paper:
- https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-26876-2_89
