Pros and cons gamification and gaming in classroom

TL;DR

This paper evaluates the benefits and challenges of gamification in education, analyzing its impact on student motivation and engagement through case studies and a semester-long survey involving gamified ranking elements.

Contribution

It provides an empirical assessment of how specific gamification elements influence student motivation and engagement in classroom settings.

Findings

Motivation decreased when gamification ranking was introduced.

Gamification can have mixed effects on student engagement.

Challenges of implementing gamification in education are discussed.

Abstract

The aim of the current work is to assess the challenges that gamification in education are facing nowadays. Benefits and disadvantages of using gamification in classroom are both discussed to offer a clearer view on the impact of using gamification within learning process. Exploratory study cases are provided to investigate the relation between motivation and engagement of the students and gamification in training. Following this idea, a survey was conducted to assess how students behavior and motivation is affected by introducing a single, specific gamification element during a semester learning process. To stimulate competition among students, a ranking type plugin was introduced within the university learning management system used for extramural education. The results prove that motivation decreases by comparison to the previous semester.