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Lookup NU author(s): Dr Lei ShiORCiD
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC 4.0).
Background: Gamification has been used in recent years to enhance the student experience in educational environments and to help students achieve an optimal experience. However, there is limited empirical evidence of the effects of gamification on specific psychological experiences, such as the students' flow experience, which is a highly motivating state associated with the learning process.Objectives: To address this gap, we examined the impact of gamification on students' flow experience within a learning management system.Methods: We conducted a controlled between-subjects experiment (N = 65) in which participants in the experimental group interacted with a gamified version of the system, which incorporated a typical gamification design consisting of a collection of various game elements that constituted a form of meta-game interaction around the learning activity (as opposed to, for example, serious games or game-based learning). In contrast, the participants in the control group used the same system with the same educational tasks but without gamification. We used descriptive and inferential statistical methods (i.e., Mann–Whitney U test) to compare the students' flow experience between the groups.Results and Conclusions: The results reveal that the influence of gamification on students' flow experience was not statistically significant. These findings suggest that current gamification designs may not effectively facilitate flow in educational contexts, highlighting the need for further research and development to align gamification with desired educational outcomes.
Author(s): Oliveira W, Dantas Scaico P, Hamari J, Li Z, Shi L
Publication type: Article
Publication status: Published
Journal: Journal of Computer Assisted Learning
Year: 2025
Volume: 41
Issue: 5
Print publication date: 01/10/2025
Online publication date: 07/09/2025
Acceptance date: 27/08/2025
Date deposited: 09/10/2025
ISSN (print): 0266-4909
ISSN (electronic): 1365-2729
Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell Publishing Ltd
URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/jcal.70120
DOI: 10.1111/jcal.70120
Data Access Statement: The data that support the findings of this study are openly available in OSF at https://osf.io/97nu4/, reference number 97nu4.
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