Empirical Support for a Causal Relationship Between Gamification and Learning Outcomes
Abstract
Preparing for exams is an important yet stressful time for many students. Self-testing is known to be an effective preparation strategy, yet some students lack motivation to engage or persist in self-testing activities. Adding game elements to a platform supporting self-testing may increase engagement and, by extension, exam performance. We conduct a randomized controlled experiment (n=701) comparing the effect of two game elements -- a points system and a badge system -- used individually and in combination. We find that the badge system elicits significantly higher levels of voluntary self-testing activity and this effect is particularly pronounced amongst a relatively small cohort. Importantly, this increased activity translates to a significant improvement in exam scores. Our data supports a causal relationship between gamification and learning outcomes, mediated by self-testing behavior. This provides empirical support for Landers' theory of gamified learning when the gamified activity is conducted prior to measuring learning outcomes.
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Game design elements such as likes, badges, skill levels, and leaderboards are used to increase learning in online courses, exercise on e-health platforms, or performance in standard organizational tasks.
“This is the idea behind using game design elements such as likes, badges, skill levels, and leaderboards to increase learning in online courses, exercise on e-health platforms, or performance in standard organizational tasks (Denny, McDonald, Empson, Kelly, & Petersen, 2018;Koivisto & Hamari, 2019;Landers, Bauer, & Callan, 2017).”
From Relative Feedback Increases Disparities in Effort and Performance in Crowdsourcing Contests (2022) · cites this paper as Denny, McDonald, Empson, Kelly, & Petersen, 2018
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“There is strong theoretical support for Hypothesis 3, given that self-testing is known to be an effective strategy for exam preparation [20, 45, 46].”
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Self-citationRelative Feedback Increases Disparities in Effort and Performance in Crowdsourcing Contests
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- Authors
- Denny, P., McDonald, F., Empson, R., Kelly, P., & Petersen, A.
- Affiliations
- University of Auckland (NZ)
- University of Otago (NZ)
- University of Toronto (CA)
- Venue
- Proceedings of the 2018 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
- Publisher
- ACM
- Published
- 2018-04-21
- Pages
- 1-13
- OpenAlex
- W2796407591
- Cited by
- 135
- References
- 12
- Citations by year
- 2026: 9 · 2025: 21 · 2024: 9 · 2023: 27 · 2022: 21 · 2021: 23 · 2020: 14 · 2019: 5 · 2018: 5 · 2017: 1
- FWCI
- 38.09
- Type
- conference paper
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Developmental and Educational Psychology › Educational Games and Gamification
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Computer Science Applications › Online Learning and Analytics
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Digital Games and Media
- Keywords
- gamification, exam preparation, self-testing, badges, point system, student engagement, exam performance, learning outcomes, motivation
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