Increasing Student Motivation in College Physics with Gamified Instruction

This study aimed at exploring the effects of gamification on the motivation of freshmen engineering students in Physics. Physics for Engineers 2, a course focused on the fundamentals of electricity and magnetism, was gamified by incorporating elements like experience (XP) points, badges, leaderboards and replayable quests. To determine if gamification has significant effect on students' motivation, the responses of the students in the Physics Motivation Questionnaire administered before and after the implementation were analyzed using the Wilcoxon Signed Rank test. Results showed that gamified instruction brought about a significant increase in all the five components of student motivation in Physics, namely: intrinsic motivation, selfefficacy, grade motivation, career motivation and self-determination. For corroboration, the qualitative data gathered from students' weekly journal entries and interview transcripts were coded to determine their perspectives and feedback on their experience of gamified instruction. Analysis of the themes revealed that students find gamified instruction to be enjoyable and exciting, highly-motivating and challenging. The replayability feature prompted them to think critically and persevere in pursuit of achieving perfect scores in the quest and make it weekly on the leaderboard. Since the structure allows them to be constantly aware of their standing in class, they can monitor their progress, identify their weaknesses and do the necessary actions to improve their performance. In summary, the freshmen engineering students had a positive experience in gamified Physics instruction.