Gamified Entrepreneurship Courses Motivate College Students’ Satisfaction: An Integrated Flow Framework

Abstract

Since the Gamified Entrepreneurship Courses have been applied to college students’ entrepreneurship courses, it has provided interactive and immersive course experiences to help improve the effect of course teaching. From the perspective of college students, Gamified Entrepreneurship Courses are a novel teaching method, and the satisfaction of college students with Gamified Entrepreneurship Courses will determine the future development of this course model. However, current research shows that college students’ satisfaction with Gamified Entrepreneurship Courses has not yet reached the desired level. Therefore, this study aims to study the factors and mechanisms that affect college students’ satisfaction with gamification entrepreneurship courses by constructing an integrated flow framework. A total of 205 college students who participated in the Gamified Entrepreneurship Courses were obtained, and the study used partial least squares (PLS) to analyze the measurement and structural models. The results show that the satisfaction of Gamified Entrepreneurship Courses is affected by presence and the competence needs, autonomy needs, and related needs in Self-determination Theory (SDT), and this effect is generated through the mediating variable of flow. Therefore, we verified that competence, autonomy, relatedness, and presence are key determinants in helping college students enter a state of flow, flow, in turn, reflects the level of satisfaction with the course. Our research provides empirical evidence for entrepreneurship curriculum teachers to improve college students’ satisfaction with the curriculum and continuous learning.

Gamification and Risk Aversion: An Empirical Essay With Management Students

“…Training potential entrepreneurs requires motivation, realistic experiences, continuous feedback, experiential learning, risk tolerance, and reduced fear of failure (Goi, 2023;He et al, 2023;Lyons To meet these criteria, teaching entrepreneurship can be based on innovative educational approaches that use games and their elements to encourage participation and engagement (Blass & Tolnai, 2022;Hu, 2020;Kulpa, 2017;Muriel & Crawford, 2020).…”

“…Within this perspective, the literature presents theories related to gamification, highlighting the Flow Theory proposed by the psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (1990). This theory describes the state of mind in which a person is completely immersed in an activity, feeling focused, energized, and deeply engaged by the challenge (He et al, 2023). By incorporating rewards, clear goals, success, failure and challenges, gamification seeks to achieve this state of mind to increase student engagement (Goi, 2023;He et al, 2023;Lyons et al, 2023).…”

“…This theory describes the state of mind in which a person is completely immersed in an activity, feeling focused, energized, and deeply engaged by the challenge (He et al, 2023). By incorporating rewards, clear goals, success, failure and challenges, gamification seeks to achieve this state of mind to increase student engagement (Goi, 2023;He et al, 2023;Lyons et al, 2023). Therefore, games as a pedagogical approach have the potential to make activities more dynamic and motivating, significantly increasing the likelihood of participants experiencing the state of flow.…”

“…In this context, when satisfying these needs, there is an increase in intrinsic motivation and engagement with the activity (Deci & Ryan, 2000). Through the implementation of game elements, entrepreneurship teaching can be designed to meet these demands, stimulating the interest and involvement of the participants (He et al, 2023).…”

“…The impact of gamification in entrepreneurship education on students' risk aversion can vary considerably since several factors can influence this result. Among them, the nature and design of the game or gamified activity stand out (Fox et al, 2018), the individual profile of students and the educational context in which gamification is applied (Chapkovski et al, 2021;He et al, 2023;Melo et al, 2023). Based on this perspective, we formulate the second hypothesis to be analyzed: H2: Gamification does not have a constant effect on reducing risk aversion across distribution.…”