Does gamification improve student learning outcome? Evidence from a meta-analysis and synthesis of qualitative data in educational contexts

By Shurui Bai, Khe Foon Timothy Hew, Biyun Huang. Educational Research and Reviews, 2020

574 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Abstract Despite the buzz around gamification as an exciting new method to engage students, evidence of its ability to enhance learning is mixed. In fact, gamification has attracted considerable controversy (“gamification is bullshit”) and some derogatory labels such as “exploitationware.” Therefore, in order to make the case for or against gamification in education, it is important to examine the effects (if any) of gamification on student learning achievements. This study is a meta-analysis of 30 independent interventions (3,202 participants) drawn from 24 quantitative studies that have examined the effects of gamification on student academic performance in various educational settings. The results show an overall significant medium effect size in favor of gamification over learning without gamification (Hedges' g = 0.504, 95% CI [0.284–0.723], p

Subfields: Computer Science Applications, Developmental and Educational Psychology, Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/4baea6e6ca74597feaa6ce691c41577a67e87b54

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In Computer Science Applications

Juho Hamari

In Developmental and Educational Psychology

In Sociology and Political Science

Citations in the corpus

Gamification in Science Education. A Systematic Review of the Literature (2021, background): “Nonetheless, gamiﬁcation is often characterized by fostering enthusiasm, a sense of enjoyment, fun, and general positive feelings towards learning, values that are directly associated with intrinsic motivation [59,82,114].”
Tailored gamification in education: A literature review and future agenda (2022, background): “According to different secondary studies (Hamari et al., 2014; Koivisto and Hamari, 2019; Bai et al., 2020b), the first studies on gamification began to be published in 2011.”