An Experiment to Assess Students’ Engagement in a Gamified Social Learning Environment

New paper published in issue 43 of eLearningPapers - Applied Games and Gamification – Drivers for Change:

An Experiment to Assess Students’ Engagement in a Gamified Social Learning Environment 

This paper presents a research work conducted to address students’ disengagement by investigating if gamification can make a contribution to solving this problem. The disposition to experience flow, a psychological state, was used as a measurement of engagement. An experiment allowed testing a research hypothesis concerning flow in a gamified environment.

co-authored with Sérgio Mateus, Rebeca Redondo a Ana Vilas.

The overall purpose of the experiment was to test the hypothesis that a gamified version of a Social Learning Environment (SLE) causes in its users an increase in their disposition to experience flow (see this other post) than the non-gamified version. The disposition to experience flow was assessed by using a questionnaire based on the Portuguese version of the DFS-2.

The experiment tested a group of subjects (a class of 3rd grade students) before and after the treatment (using the gamified version of the SLE). A pre-test, using the DFS-2, indicated how the subjects did prior to administration of the treatment condition and a post-test evaluated the subjects after the treatment. The effect was taken as the difference between the pre-test and the post-test scores.

Although small, an increase in the students’ tendency to experience flow was observed, particularly in the flow dimensions related to flow outcomes.

Issue 43 of eLearning Papers has two other gamification papers:

To Game or not to Game – a pilot study on the use of gamification for team allocation in entrepreneurship education 

and

What really works in gamification? Short answer: we don’t know, so let’s start thinking like experimenters