Motivation through gamification

Abstract

While gamification, the use of game design elements in non-game contexts, has been put forth as one way to motivate the digital students of today and tomorrow, the area has not been explored extensively in practice. In addition, possible influences by the individual variation found in EFL classrooms have not been attended to. Moreover, the field has not made significant efforts to elicit what the target group, the students, actually want their gamified classroom to look like. In order to fill some of these gaps, the following mixed-methods study set out to 1) measure to what extent students wanted to implement seven gamification elements: clear goals, feedback, levels, points, leaderboards, achievements and narratives; 2) analyse how gaming frequency, gaming motivation and gender influenced their preferences; and 3) gather students’ suggestions for implementing the various elements in the EFL classroom. 111 student questionnaires from a Swedish upper secondary school made up the quantitative data. 15 of these students also took part in focus group interviews to discuss suggestions and limitations of implementing gamification in ELT, which accounted for the qualitative data. Overall, the students were positive towards most, but not all, of the gamification elements, even considering the variation found in relation to the background factors. In addition, the students provided several suggestions and some reservations for using each gamification element, which could be used to inform teachers and researchers interested in implementing gamification in the EFL classroom.