The impact of gamification in educational settings on student learning outcomes: a meta-analysis
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The impact of gamification in educational settings on student learning outcomes: a meta‑analysis Rui Huang1 · Albert D. Ritzhaupt1 · Max Sommer1 · Jiawen Zhu1 · Anita Stephen1 · Natercia Valle1 · John Hampton1 · Jingwei Li1
© Association for Educational Communications and Technology 2020
Abstract Gamification research in educational settings has produced mixed results on student learning outcomes. Educational researchers and practitioners both struggle with identifying when, where, and how to use gamification design concepts. The present study provides findings from a meta-analysis that integrated the empirical, quantitative research on gamification in formal educational settings on student learning outcomes. This was achieved by examining the overall effect size, identifying which gamification design elements (e.g., badges) were used, and determining under what circumstances (e.g., engineering education) gamification works. The final corpus of data included 30 independent studies and associated effect sizes comparing gamification to non-gamification conditions while accounting for N = 3083 participants. The overall effect size using a random-effects model is g = .464 [.244 to .684] in favor of the gamification condition, which is a small to medium effect size. We examined 14 different gamification design elements (e.g., leaderboards) and showed that each leads to different effects on student learning outcomes. Further, the type of publication (e.g., journal article), student classification (e.g., undergraduate), and subject area (e.g., mathematics) are also investigated as moderators. We provide a discussion of our findings, some recommendations for future research, and some brief closing remarks. Keywords Gamification · Meta-analysis · Student learning outcomes · Game design features
Introduction Since its inception in the early 2000s, gamification has grown in popularity and evolved along with the information and communication technologies (e.g., Internet) that support the method. Gamification has emerged across sectors (e.g., healthcare) and disciplines (e.g., computer science) as a way to engage users in non-game contexts using techniques that are derived from video game design. While there is no universally agreed upon definition, we * Albert D. Ritzhaupt [email protected] 1
School of Teaching and Learning, College of Education, University of Florida, 2423 Norman Hall, PO BOX 117048, Gainesville, FL 32611, USA
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have adopted the definition provided by Deterding et al. (2011), which states that gamification is the “use of game design elements in non-game contexts” (p. 9). Seaborn and Fels (2015) note that “the inconsistent use of the term ‘gamification’ serves to impede attempts to define it but also exposes its multiplicity” (p. 18). In this research, we are interested in the application of gamification to educational situations, thus the “non-game context” here refers to educational settings. We have observed a steady rise in the number of empirical studie
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