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While the motivational effect of educational gamification is largely recognized, the impact of the gamification element virtual currency (VC) is underexplored, especially in an educational setting. To address this gap, the goal of the presented multi-case empirical study was to systematically explore the impact of virtual currency on learners’ engagement, motivation, and academic performance across different contexts and to uncover potentially generalizable results. Accordingly, this paper presents the outcomes of a multi-perspective analysis of students’ experiences in out-of-class practicing in a learning environment gamified with VC and the effect of this game element. The work builds on previous case studies with analogical goals, which the authors have conducted in different contexts, including the university type, student population, subject area, etc. The provided comprehensive cross-case analysis integrates and extends the previous results tracing the path to generalizable knowledge about the potential of VC. While the results of this multi-case study demonstrate a significant increase in student engagement in out-of-class practicing gamified with virtual currency, they fail to show a significant increase in students’ intrinsic motivation and students’ final course grades. This study is a step forward in enhancing our understanding of the multifaceted effect of virtual currency on learners’ experience. 

There has been an increasing effort to make activities that are not inherently interesting for all learners more attractive through gamification. Although the research on the effectiveness of educational gamification has been growing, the effects of some gamification elements on learners’ motivation and engagement are not well understood. In response to this gap, in this paper we describe an experience of gamifying out-of-class practicing with Virtual Currency (VC) in a Computer Networking course. The results of our study show that the VC-based gamification (without interactions with any other gamification elements) had a positive impact on student engagement compared to non-gamified online practicing. The learners’ VC earning and spending behaviors indicate also that Virtual Currency brings additional objectives for students to strive for, besides grades. 

Effective gamification can only be based on understanding the relationship between learner motivation and the game elements which are used to gamify learning activities. Although frequently mentioned, Virtual Currency (VC) remains underused and scarcely studied in educational gamification. As a motivational affordance, VC can be thought of as supporting different types of motivation, but currently, there is a lack of empirical studies which investigate this. Recognizing this gap, the purpose of our study was to empirically investigate whether and how gamifying learning activities with virtual currency can engender motivation for out-of-class practicing and what type of motivation. In the limited research others have conducted, VC has been studied largely in combination with other game elements, which does not allow reaching reliable conclusions about the impact of the individual elements. For this reason, we studied the effects of VC in a gamified Discrete Math course isolated from other game elements. The study showed that using VC to gamify practicing increased students’ practicing activity, which resulted in improved academic performance. The study also revealed that while gamified practicing did not increase students’ intrinsic motivation, it supported internalization of motivation towards this learning activity. 

Gamification – using game mechanics for affording gameful experiences in non-game contexts – is getting increased attention in the educational field. However, its motivational mechanisms, intended to enhance student learning, are still not sufficiently understood. In this paper, we present an empirical study on the use of one of the most popular gamification elements, badges. The goal is to shed some light on their impact on student engagement and motivation. The study results suggest that while the badges improve student engagement and academic performance, they do not affect the student’s intrinsic motivation. However, we speculate that they foster internalization of the learning-related extrinsic motivators’ values, which results in increased engagement in the learning activities.