Effective Usage of Gamification Techniques to Boost Student Engagement

Abstract

As the engineering education fraternity is getting accustomed to the new normal amidst the global COVID-19 pandemic, online teaching has been gaining much attention in the recent past. While teachers are getting adjusted to this new way of teaching, it is paramount that the teaching-learning process caters to the needs of our millennial learners. Considering all these factors, the teacher must continuously work towards always keeping the students motivated. The authors of this paper brought in a series of innovative gamification constructs throughout a semester across multiple courses to gauge the level of involvement of students during the online lectures as well as the Learning Management System (LMS). The motive was the ensure that the students actively participate in all deliberations, thereby positively impacting the online learning process. The participants of the study were 56 second year Post Graduate students who were undergoing online classes. Several tasks, as well as assessments, were assigned to the students. While doing so, students were introduced to new gamification tools like Mentimeter, Edpuzzle, Kahoot, Quizizz and many more at regular intervals to break the monotony and keep them on their feet waiting for the next task to be performed. This not only meant that the students started participating in the classes more actively but also kept them engaged with a variety of innovative tools. The results clearly showed that the students started learning the concepts better while keeping competitive spirits. When it came to individual activities, there was an urge in students to outperform each other, which meant that the students would go that extra mile to get the things done. At the same time, team tasks had a high level of collaboration resulting in effective learning and building camaraderie. The students prefer learning through multiple sources and multiple platforms. By leveraging technological advancements and bringing in gamification in learning, the overall teaching-learning process gets highly benefited.

E-Learning Strategies to Improve the Students’ Engagement

“…Diversifying learning resources, direct interaction by integrating mandatory quizzes and initiating short polls, anytime during synchronous sessions, feedback, and mandatory activities at the end of each topic, awarding students with badges and virtual coins -elements of gamification in Moodle, led to increased level of interest for students (figure 5). The distribution of students' scores on assessment demonstrates the importance of interaction and gamification elements in online courses [22].…”

“…Then, depending on the level of engagement of each student, the teacher can adopt the appropriate strategy. In other words, during online courses, the aspects that define student's engagementattention, interaction [22], curiosity, and interest can be measured or estimated with a high degree of accuracy using the learning management system (LMS) [21]. The student's attention, the behavioral factor, during the online classes can be measured by analyzing the marks obtained by the student at the compulsory quizzes at the end of the course or by grading the work tasks during the seminars.…”

“…For instance, the Z generation was born with technology and in terms of education they prefer more interactive and visual content [15]. The generation Y is represented by highly visual learners too and they prefer to learn by using learning strategies and learning styles [22]. A Google Trends analysis since 2011 demonstrates the growing interest in "adaptive learning", "adaptive technology" and "student engagement" (figure 1).…”

Students´ Perception of Real-Time Quiz Kahoot! As a Review Tool in Higher Education: A Case of Study

“…For this, there are numerous online tools, such as Kahoot! that offer a variety of excellent options to support active learning [4]. The use of multiple devices, from laptops to mobile phones, which was the resource used in this study, further increases the interest of the students.…”

“…In recent years, in the field of education, student engagement has become recognized as an essential attribute for enhancing motivation and promoting learning. For this purpose, the implementation of gamification, as the use of games in learning, has been generally considered a successful tool [1][2][3][4]. The core idea of gamification lies in the use of the motivational strength of game elements in an educational context [5].…”