Keywords

1 Introduction

Gamification is defined as the use of game design elements in non-game contexts [1]. The term “gamification” was first used by a British computer programmer, Pelling, in late 2002. His original definition of gamification is to make electronic transactions enjoyable and fast through applying game-like accelerated user interface design [2]. Although the initial attempt ended in failure, the concept of gamification has become popular in both industry and academia [3]. Gamification has been applied in a variety of areas such as business and education to improve user experience and engagement [4].

Recently, gamification has attracted increasing interest across a wide range of contexts as a way to increase user engagement. Marketsandmarkets.com forecast the global gamification market to grow from USD 1.65 billion in 2015 to USD 11.10 billion by 2020 [5]. Companies are adopting gamification to enrich customer loyalty and employee productivity [6].

The rapid evolution in industry is mirrored in education. Students are becoming more technology-savvy, team-oriented, resourceful, and better at multi-tasking [7]. Motivation is considered as a key determinant, more important than ever, of engaging students in learning activities and allowing them to retain knowledge [8]. Part of educators’ role is to motivate students, on top of knowledge transfer. However, this mission is becoming more challenging as students may now value rewards that are changed frequently to meet changing expectations and demands. Gamification has recently become a popular initiative adopted by educators worldwide as means of increasing motivation.

However, the pros and cons of using gamification in education to capture students’ interest and attention have been debated in the literature [9, 10]. Although gamification is expected to have a positive impact on engagement, participation, and learning behaviors, learner engagement needs to be understood in terms of intrinsic motivation to have a long-term effect [11, 12]. Hence, this research examines the effect of gamification on intrinsic motivation in online learning.

2 Background and Literature Review

The essential component of gamification is a reward system with points and leaderboards being two of the most basic patterns of rewards [6, 13]. A fun part of game playing is the failure and errors made in the process which lead to the final success. Therefore, the goal of gamification is not to punish failure but to associate a positive relationship with it by creating rapid feedback cycles and keeping the stakes for individual learning episodes low [9]. The ultimate objective is to nurture a positive learning behavior and enrich students’ interest in learning. However, many have cautioned against the over-reliance on gamification elements, as they may diminish intrinsic interest in both game- and non-game contexts, ultimately leading users to stop interacting with the application or service altogether [14].

There are ten categories of motivational affordances in gamification: Points, Leaderboards, Badges, Levels, Story/Theme, Clear Goals, Feedback, Rewards, Progress, and Challenge [15]. Points, Badges, and Leaderboards, which are also called the PBL triad, are the most commonly used motivational affordances [6, 13, 16].

Points.

Points are the heart of any gaming system – the accumulation of points is shared among players, or between the designer and the players. The point system includes experience points, redeemable points, skill points, karma points, and reputation points. Players can earn experience points based on specific activities in the system. Redeemable points serve as currencies in the virtual economy and can be in the form of coins, bucks, cash, etc. Players can earn redeemable points and exchange them for things they want. Skill points are assigned based on a player’s level of competence in completing specific activities. Karma points are donated by others and they create a behavioral path for user reward and altruism. Reputation points act as a proxy for trust between two or more parties.

Badges.

Badges offer encouragement and recognition to players. Badges are also used to indicate the completion of goals. Badges are sometimes used to replace levels.

Leaderboards.

Leaderboards utilize a ranking system, which makes comparisons between players. There are two types of leaderboards: no-disincentive leaderboards and infinite leaderboards. The no-disincentive leaderboards will not show the players’ literal ranking unless the players are in the top ranking; it can reduce the potential self-esteem damage. The infinite leaderboards show every player ordered by the rank. Players can slice and dice the leaderboard or display the leaderboard with a limited view. High rankings on the leaderboards can bring positive effects along with a high degree of pressure to continue to do well [17].

Gamification has been widely applied in several contexts, such as commerce, education/learning, health/exercise, work, innovation/ideation, data gathering, and marketing [15]. The motivational power of gamification in the education context has been gaining increasing attention in recent years. The reason for gamifying education is to increase the engagement of students and improve their performance/achievement, motivation, and sense of accomplishment [18,19,20]. Bunchball introduced game mechanics and game dynamics, where game mechanics are actions, behaviors, and control mechanisms to gamify an activity, and game dynamics relate to desires and motivations [21]. Table 1 shows the game dynamics identified by Bunchball for six game mechanisms: points, levels, challenges, virtual goods and spaces, leaderboards, and gifts/charity [21].

Table 1. Game mechanics and dynamics [21]
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Gamification in education can bring benefits to students and teachers as compared with traditional learning methods. In the school setting, information is usually applied out of the context of actual use or deviating from the user’s purpose, while gamification provides information on demand in a just-in-time basis. Learning in traditional schools is designed based on the lowest common denominator; however, learning from games is challenging but do-able [22]. Gamification in education gives positive feedback to students, and students can be encouraged to push forward [18]. Simões et al. introduced a gamification framework, which allows teachers to create challenges based on the student’s level of knowledge, achieve learning objectives through multiple ways, provide feedback and rewards, select the appropriate game mechanics, and use competitions to promote valuable behaviors [23]. Students also deal with failure as part of the learning process, explore new roles, and recognize and monitor their progress [23]. On the other hand, a study by Hanus and Fox on the use of a leaderboard and badges in a classroom setting found that the use of these game mechanics may damage educational outcomes [17]. Over time, students taking the gamified course have lower levels of intrinsic motivation, satisfaction, and empowerment than students from the non-gamified course. They concluded that the combination of leaderboards, badges, and competition mechanics will not improve educational outcomes [17]. Mekler et al. found that points, levels, and leaderboards increased user performance but has no effect on competence, autonomy or intrinsic motivation in carrying out an image annotation task [24, 25]. Hence, the literature has provided inconsistent findings from positive to neutral to negative effects of gamification.

3 Theoretical Foundation and Hypotheses

In this research, we will focus on studying the impact of using the leaderboard and point system in online education. Based on self-determination theory and cognitive evaluation theory [26,27,28], we will hypothesize the effects of using a leaderboard and the point system on intrinsic motivation in online education. Intrinsic motivation refers to people’s interests and values that are in line with their basic psychological needs.

The self-determination theory is concerned with human motivation and personality [26,27,28]. It identifies three basic psychological or innate needs of humans that drive intrinsic motivation: competence, autonomy, and relatedness. Cognitive evaluation theory is a sub-theory within self-determination theory that focuses on competence and autonomy, and explains variability in intrinsic motivation by considering social and environmental factors [26, 27]. Factors that support or enhance the basic needs can contribute to intrinsic motivation and optimal functioning, while factors that thwart the basic needs can reduce intrinsic motivation and performance. In other words, external events, such as feedback, impact intrinsic motivation differently depending on whether they are considered informational or controlling. When an external event is perceived as informational, it enhances one’s internal perceived locus of causality (or autonomy) and perceived competence, which in turn increase intrinsic motivation. When an external event is perceived as controlling, it enhances one’s external perceived locus of causality (i.e., little or no autonomy), which reduces intrinsic motivation.

Because the point system is provided to learners as an informational feedback to support their learning process, we expect the point system to enhance the learners’ internal perceived locus of causality and perceived competence, which in turn is expected to increase the learners’ intrinsic motivation. Hence, the following hypothesis is proposed:

  • H1: The point system increases learners’ intrinsic motivation.

A leaderboard typically displays only the scores and rankings of the top performers. The use of a leaderboard creates competition among learners, and rewards only the top performers. By creating a competition in an online learning environment, the leaderboard can be perceived to be controlling and can increase learners’ perceived external locus of causality, which reduces their intrinsic motivation. Hence, the following hypothesis is proposed:

  • H2: The leaderboard decreases learners’ intrinsic motivation.

Our research model is shown in Fig. 1.

Fig. 1.
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Research model

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4 Research Methodology

We used an experimental approach to study the effect of using a leaderboard and points on intrinsic motivation. The study was conducted on eight classes taking a bridging mathematics module in Singapore Polytechnic during semester 2 of the 2016/17 academic year. Students had access to a Learning Analytics Networked Tutoring System (LearningANTS), which is an online system that supports differentiated learning and facilitates learning analytics with in-system gamification features. They had access to the system for tutorial for over a period of one month. Two mathematics topics – solving trigonometric equations and rules of differentiation - were rolled out. The system adaptively released the topics to students. There were altogether four difficulty levels of learning achievement in LearningANTS – Beginner, Advanced Beginner, Competent, and Expert – for each topic. Starting from the Beginner level, students worked on questions and levelled up to the next achievement level when they performed well for the level. Students’ progression through the difficulty levels for each topic were dependent on their own ability.

As illustrated in Fig. 2, LearningANTS automatically tracked students’ learning progress and their learning progress was presented in a straight-forward way to help students monitor their own learning. Students could review all the questions that they had attempted, and communicate with their teachers via a feedback feature in the system if they needed help with the questions. At the same time, teachers could monitor the learning progress of their class through the system. Doing so facilitated the face-to-face tutorial sessions as teachers were then able to offer more targeted help to the class, for example, by going over questions with which a majority of the students had trouble, as well as dive down to help an individual student who was struggling to progress in the system.

Fig. 2.
figure 2

Screen of student progress in LearningANTS

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The in-system gamification features – leaderboard and points – were set up for the eight classes using a 2 × 2 experimental design shown in Table 2.

Table 2. Set-up of classes for gamification features - Leaderboard and Points
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For the study, all teachers were briefed prior to the deployment of the system that they should use the system for an hour during tutorial class for each planned topic. Since only two topics were planned, teachers were expected to use the system for two hours during face-to-face tutorials in total for the period of the study. Other than the deliberate use of the system in class for the two hours, all teachers were informed not to make any effort in requiring students to use the system during other times, whether on campus or outside campus.

At the end of the study, students completed a questionnaire that captured their intrinsic motivation using the following four questions adopted from [29].

  1. 1.

    I use LearningANTS because I think it is interesting.

  2. 2.

    I use LearningANTS because I think it is nice.

  3. 3.

    I use LearningANTS because I think it is fun.

  4. 4.

    I use LearningANTS because I feel good when I use it.

4.1 LearningANTS

LearningANTS is an online learning system co-developed by Singapore Polytechnic and 3ELOGIC under the funding of Singapore Government’s Public-Private Co-Innovation Partnership Fund. It was developed with two missions:

  • To support data-driven differentiated learning, i.e., all students within a classroom can learn effectively, regardless of the difference in their abilities

  • To enable fact-based teaching so that educators can teach more effectively with data collected on students’ learning

Figure 3 shows a screen capture of LearningANTS from the viewpoint of Student Chenerd Soh. Student Soh has earned a total of 1890 points and is currently ranked first on the leaderboard. The leaderboard displays the name and corresponding points earned by the top five students.

Fig. 3.
figure 3

Screen of the Leaderboard in LearningANTS

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5 Preliminary Results

We received a total of 67 completed questionnaires from the student subjects. The distribution of these responses across the four conditions is shown in Table 3.

Table 3. Distribution of completed responses across the four conditions
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Our Cronbach’s alpha coefficient for the four-item measure of intrinsic motivation is 0.93, indicating that it has a very high internal consistency or reliability. From the data analysis carried out using ANOVA, the main effect for points is not significant (p = 0.414 > 0.05), thus H1 is not supported. The main effect for the leaderboard is significant (p = 0.001 < 0.05), thus H2 is supported. More interestingly, there is an observed interaction between points and the leaderboard (p = 0.002), where the condition with no point system and no leaderboard produced the highest intrinsic motivation among the four conditions, and the condition with the leaderboard but no point system produced the lowest intrinsic motivation.

The results suggest that gamification using the leaderboard in an online learning context can have a detrimental effect on intrinsic motivation of learners, especially when a point system is not available to provide feedback on the learning progress. The leaderboard can serve as a disincentive and be perceived as a ‘controlling’ factor due to the intense competition created, thus taking away intrinsic motivation from learners. When the leaderboard is not used, learners’ intrinsic motivation is higher when there is no point system than when there is a point system. However, when a leaderboard is used, learners’ intrinsic motivation is higher when there is a point system than when a point system is not used. Hence, the point system has a positive effect on intrinsic motivation when a leaderboard is present and a negative effect on intrinsic motivation when a leaderboard is not used. Overall, from the perspective of intrinsic motivation, it seems gamification using the leaderboard and the point system creates a negative effect on online learning.

6 Limitations and Future Research

One limitation of this research is that completing the questionnaire was optional and hence, not all students completed it. Hence, our results may be skewed toward students who tended to have high intrinsic motivation in learning. If the subjects were students with high intrinsic motivation in learning, offering gamification could be unnecessary and even detrimental to their motivation due to the gamification features being perceived as controlling. In future research, we may require all students to fill out the questionnaire.

The current research does not examine other variables such as end-of-semester performance in mathematics, actual time spent using the LearningANTS system, extrinsic motivation, user engagement, or student performance (points/levels) indicated by the LearningANTS system. It also does not consider covariates such as gender, age, GPA, motivation to learn, background, past or previous performance in mathematics, and involvement or interest in this course. We hope to incorporate these variables into our future research to provide a more complete understanding on the effect of gamification on students’ learning. We are also interested to test a more complete set of gamification features in future research [15, 30].

Although this study was conducted in the field (i.e., an educational institution), we hope to further examine the use of the LearningANTS system in other educational institutions in order to extend the generalizability of the findings. We are also interested in examining the use of the LearningANTS system as a learning management system in organizational settings.

7 Conclusions

Our research findings suggest that highly motivated students may not need gamification. We also found that the use of leaderboards has a detrimental effect on intrinsic motivation in learning, especially when the point system is not provided as a form of feedback. Hence, educational institutions need to be very careful in implementing gamification in order not to negatively affect the intrinsic motivation of the learners. We also found that intrinsic motivation tends to be highest when both the leaderboard and point system are not provided. We believe that when both the leaderboard and the point system are not available, learners tend to adopt the mastery goal over the performance goal due to the lack of feedback on their overall performance. With a mastery goal in mind, students’ intrinsic motivation is heightened. When a leaderboard is provided without a point system, learners may feel controlled or pressured to become a top performer, which decreases their intrinsic motivation. Hence, caution is needed to carefully analyze the impact of gamification in education.