Validating the Effectiveness of Data-Driven Gamification Recommendations: An Exploratory Study

TL;DR

This study evaluates student perceptions of data-driven gamification strategies in e-learning, confirming the importance of acknowledgment, objectives, and progression for effective engagement.

Contribution

It provides validation of data-driven gamification strategies through student feedback, offering new insights and design recommendations for e-learning environments.

Findings

Acknowledgement, Objective, and Progression are perceived as important.

Students value personalized and goal-oriented gamification elements.

The study offers practical design recommendations for domain specialists.

Abstract

Gamification design has benefited from data-driven approaches to creating strategies based on students characteristics. However, these strategies need further validation to verify their effectiveness in e-learning environments. The exploratory study presented in this paper thus aims at verifying how data-driven gamified strategies are perceived by the students, i.e., the users of e-learning environments. In this study, we conducted a survey presenting 25 predefined strategies, based on a previous study, to students and analysed each strategys perceived relevance, instanced in an e-learning environment. Our results show that students perceive Acknowledgement, Objective and Progression as important elements in a gamified e-learning environment. We also provide new insights about existing elements and design recommendations for domain specialists.