Gamification in Academia

Abstract

Gamification is increasingly applied in contexts where personal performance is of importance. However, the psychological nature of their relation has not been thoroughly examined. The authors investigated how achievement-based gamification impacts attitudinal engagement and performance across 6 university courses. The authors created challenges and badges connected to coursework and measured students’ engagement and performance while gamifying the course in 1 year of the 2-year quasi-experiment. In the other year, the authors examined engagement, performance, and would-be-attained achievements were the course gamified. Results show students performed moderately better in gamified condition. Moreover, badges had a guiding effect on students as badge-awarding actions were carried out more in gamified courses. Importantly, the authors found a small mediation effect of engagement in gamification-performance relation. The authors thus conclude badges may be a useful method when gamifying academic performance and that work attitudes are a useful framework to further examine the relation.