Gamification Elements and Students’ Collaborative Problem-Solving Skills: A Literature Analysis

Abstract

Collaborative problem-solving skills (CPS) are widely recognized as an important skill in the future workplace. However, the conventional teaching method is not effective in building students’ CPS and need further intervention as nowadays youth are no longer prefer passive learning. Besides, they prefer to integrate multimedia and virtual elements into their study to make it interesting. Hence, gamification become one of the most popular topics for researchers to find out the strategies to improve CPS. Hence, this paper will discuss the literature analysis of gamification elements and their corresponding effects on students’ CPS. Literature analysis is being conducted to explore the effects of different gamification elements on students' CPS. A total of 18 previous studies are being examined. Based on the literature analysis, it was found that achievement-related gamification elements, which include points, levels, leaderboards, and badges have significant effects on enhancing students' CPS. Avatar and feedback only show effectiveness in enhancing students’ cognitive skills and the progression bar show no effect on cognitive skills and social skills. In addition, chat only shows effectiveness in enhancing students’ social skills. It can be concluded that the use of gamification elements must be based on the different gamification goals.