A web-based collaborative reading annotation system with gamification mechanisms to improve reading performance

This study presents a web-based collaborative reading annotation system (WCRAS) with gamification mechanisms to motivate students' annotations behaviors and promote students' reading comprehension performance. The research participants were 55 fifth grade students from two classes of an elementary school in northeastern Taiwan. A quasi-experimental design was adopted to evaluate the effects of the experimental and control groups respectively using WCRAS with and without gamification mechanisms to support digital reading on students' annotation behaviors, collaborative interaction relationship, reading comprehension performance, and immersion experience. The results showed that the experimental group made significantly more annotations across almost all types of reading annotations and response annotations and had a significantly higher degree of immersive experience and social interaction than the control group. However, the difference in reading comprehension performance between the two groups has not been found. In addition, although the experimental group provided more amounts of high-quality annotations, the group did not generate more quantity of annotations related to reading comprehension aspects assessed by PIRLS. These research findings indicate that a gap between the promotion of the quantity and quality of participation and learning outcomes exists. This study is significant to address the need that designs the gamification mechanisms to encourage high-quality annotations that can effectively enhance students' reading comprehension. To better associate game features and learning performance in the WCRAS with gamification mechanisms, future studies are suggested to promote both annotation quality and connection between reading achievement and gamification mechanisms.