Effectiveness of Gamification on Students’ Online Activity in a Distance Learning Class

Abstract

In the field of education, gamification is expected to be one of elements that can enhance student motivation to study. Although there are several studies abroad that show positive correlation between gamification and student activity, there are still minimum research about this topic in Indonesian context, specifically in distance learning environment. This research is aimed to see the effects of gamification on student online activity in a distance learning class. Distance learning environment provides a different characteristic of students who usually already have worked thus the effectiveness of gamification on them is still questionable. To minimize bias, this research does not use access restriction. By letting them access freely without restriction, a more authentic result is more likely to be obtained because students access their course voluntarily. As result, the numbers of online activities from both categories were compared and analyzed using quantitative approach with comparative method to see the effects of gamification on student online activity. The findings are interesting because it shows that the gamified class has higher number of activities in all course components but the difference between two classes are not significant. The result also shows that on certain dates the number of non-gamified class is higher than the gamified class.