Investigating gamification’s effect on student motivation when authoring questions

Abstract: Gamification is the use of game design elements in non-game contexts, and it has recently received a fast growing interest in both academia and industry. Several studies have shown that gamification can increase motivation in various contexts, such as health and education. Within education it has been shown that including question-authoring as part of a course can have positive effects on students’ performance. This study combines these two areas and investigates gamification’s effect on student motivation when authoring questions. To do this a web-based question-authoring system with support for both gamification and non-gamification was developed. The system was then tested by students (n=11) with the participants divided into two groups: a group using the gamified version and a group using the non-gamified version. After using the system for a week the participants were surveyed about their experience. The results of the study indicate that gamification can increase students’ motivation when writing questions. But due to the rather low participation in the study no concrete conclusions can be drawn.