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Increasing Student Motivation in College Physics with Gamified Instruction

Published: 03 May 2020 Publication History

Abstract

This study aimed at exploring the effects of gamification on the motivation of freshmen engineering students in Physics. Physics for Engineers 2, a course focused on the fundamentals of electricity and magnetism, was gamified by incorporating elements like experience (XP) points, badges, leaderboards and replayable quests. To determine if gamification has significant effect on students' motivation, the responses of the students in the Physics Motivation Questionnaire administered before and after the implementation were analyzed using the Wilcoxon Signed Rank test. Results showed that gamified instruction brought about a significant increase in all the five components of student motivation in Physics, namely: intrinsic motivation, self-efficacy, grade motivation, career motivation and self-determination. For corroboration, the qualitative data gathered from students' weekly journal entries and interview transcripts were coded to determine their perspectives and feedback on their experience of gamified instruction. Analysis of the themes revealed that students find gamified instruction to be enjoyable and exciting, highly-motivating and challenging. The replayability feature prompted them to think critically and persevere in pursuit of achieving perfect scores in the quest and make it weekly on the leaderboard. Since the structure allows them to be constantly aware of their standing in class, they can monitor their progress, identify their weaknesses and do the necessary actions to improve their performance. In summary, the freshmen engineering students had a positive experience in gamified Physics instruction.

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  • (2024)Gamification model in physics flipped classroom for increasing out-of-class participationPROCEEDINGS OF THE TEGAL INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON APPLIED SCIENCES 2022: Applied Science Research Post-Covid-19 Pandemic10.1063/5.0200943(020004)Online publication date: 2024
  • (2022)Investigation of the Effect of Badges in the Online Homework System for Undergraduate General Physics CourseEducation Sciences10.3390/educsci1203021712:3(217)Online publication date: 17-Mar-2022
  • (2021)Study of the Training of Environmentalists through Gamification as A University CourseSustainability10.3390/su1304232313:4(2323)Online publication date: 20-Feb-2021

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      cover image ACM Other conferences
      IC4E '20: Proceedings of the 2020 11th International Conference on E-Education, E-Business, E-Management, and E-Learning
      January 2020
      441 pages
      ISBN:9781450372947
      DOI:10.1145/3377571
      Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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      Published: 03 May 2020

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      Author Tags

      1. Gamification
      2. Motivation
      3. Pedagogy
      4. Physics
      5. Strategy

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      • (2024)Gamification model in physics flipped classroom for increasing out-of-class participationPROCEEDINGS OF THE TEGAL INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON APPLIED SCIENCES 2022: Applied Science Research Post-Covid-19 Pandemic10.1063/5.0200943(020004)Online publication date: 2024
      • (2022)Investigation of the Effect of Badges in the Online Homework System for Undergraduate General Physics CourseEducation Sciences10.3390/educsci1203021712:3(217)Online publication date: 17-Mar-2022
      • (2021)Study of the Training of Environmentalists through Gamification as A University CourseSustainability10.3390/su1304232313:4(2323)Online publication date: 20-Feb-2021

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