Design and Learning Effectiveness Evaluation of Gamification in e-Learning Systems

This paper proposes a gamification design model that can be used to design and develop gamified e-learning systems. Furthermore, a controlled and carefully designed experimental evaluation in terms of learning effectiveness of gamification is offered. The experiment was conducted with 44 participants randomly assigned to an experimental 'gamified' condition and a controlled 'non-gamified' condition. In both conditions the same learning material, to teach computer security, were used. The main difference between the two conditions was the integration of gamification in an e-learning system designed based on the proposed model. The results indicate that learning using the gamified version of the e-learning system produces better short-term and medium-term learning gain than learning using the non-gamified e-learning version. Future avenues of research are also provided.