Leveraging Gamification for Design and Implementation of an Online Learning Platform

Abstract

Digital transformation of the education sector has garnered a lot of attention in recent times both from the industry and academia. Fueled by increased availability of the Internet and digital technologies, online education is going through rapid evolution. Many educational organizations have adopted online mode of operation, and dedicated e-learning platforms have emerged – making education available to a huge number of learners and encouraging lifelong learning. Taking advantage of the convenience of self-regulated anytime-anywhere education, millions of users enroll in online courses, but unfortunately only about a tenth of them complete these courses. One of the main reasons for this high dropout rate has been pointed out to be learners’ incapability to retain motivation, or – putting it the other way round – lack of strategy by content providers to retain learners’ motivation. Recently, gamification has been increasingly used in educational contents in order to retain learners’ motivation throughout the duration of the course. In the same vein of such research, in this paper, we present Quiz and Treasures, a web-based learning platform which incorporates various game elements. We thoroughly analyzed the pros and cons of our proposed gamified learning system through the lens of Octalysis – one of the most prominent contemporary frameworks for gamification – and juxtaposing that result with Self-determination theory in terms of extrinsic and intrinsic motivation. We also conducted a user study, result of which shows our application influenced positively in retaining learners’ motivation, with majority of them rating their experience as enjoying, and expressing intention to continue using the application. In addition, Quiz and Treasures allows instructors and administrators to register quizzes in advance and analyze results, enabling them to visually capture learners’ level of progress.