Can Gamification Help in Increasing Motivation, Engagement, and Satisfaction? A gamified experience in teaching CS to students from other disciplines

Abstract

The digital revolution is causing the new generations to demand new ways of learning. Motivating students is one crucial element of the learning-teaching process to achieve students’ learning, which is the main objective of education. Using typical gaming elements in non-game environments, gamification transforms the learning process into a more motivating and enjoyable experience. Therefore, gamification offers adequate solutions for the educational needs of the new generation of students. Although most studies have found benefits from gamification, the results have not been encouraging in some cases. Several review studies suggest that more empirical studies are needed to investigate the motivating effects of using gamification in different educational settings and for specific student types. This study wants to answer whether using the proposed gamification design affects motivation, engagement, and satisfaction in teaching computer science to university students from other disciplinary areas such as journalism and audiovisual communication. The experiment consists of a gamified experience in a virtual classroom in Moodle for four weeks on general computer science content. A control group and a test group were used. The difference between the two was the use of gamified elements (points, badges, levels, task unlocking...). From the data obtained in this study, no significant differences were found in motivation and satisfaction between the different groups or the different methodologies. Our results demonstrate a specific positive correlation between engagement, motivation, and satisfaction. It is worth noting the positive values obtained in this type of course among all the students who were part of this experience and methodology.