Gamification to Engage Students in Higher Education

• Main Authors: TAN, Jayarani, SOCKALINGAM, Nachamma
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University 2015
• Subjects: Gamification; Higher Education; Leadership and Team Building; Singapore Management University; Business
• Online Access: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/lkcsb_research/4740; https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/context/lkcsb_research/article/5739/viewcontent/GamificationEngageStudentsHigherEducation_RT_NS_2016Mar_WP.pdf
• Institution: Singapore Management University

According to the 2014 Horizon report, gamification is a significant development in higher education. Gamification refers to the application of gaming mechanics in non-gaming contexts such as education to increase participants’ engagement. Given that gamification in higher education is still nascent, there is a lack of literature on this. This paper attempts to narrow this gap by documenting the use of gamification in the teaching of a foundational course called “Leadership and Team Building (LTB)”, from the LKC School of Business at Singapore Management University. The objective of introducing gamification was to engage students in learning beyond the classroom, in an interactive manner. To this end, a mobile application called “GameLead” was designed, developed and used in the LTB module. The GameLead application, accessible on mobile and desktop platforms, presented students with various weekly challenges on topics relevant to leadership and teambuilding. By participating in these weekly challenges at their own convenience, students could earn points, collaborate with peers, be rewarded with special privileges and compete against each other via a leaderboard. Student participation and the earned points from the GameLead application were then integrated with the face-to-face lessons. To understand the impact of the Gamelead application on student engagement, an online survey was conducted at the end of the course in the second semester of AY2014/2015. A total of 164 students from four classes responded on the survey. Of these 76% responded that they would like such a gamification in other modules in SMU and over 87% agreed that GameLead made them think deep, learn from peers, and relate course content to real-life context. Overall, the feedback revealed that gamification had a positive impact in engaging students in learning. This paper presents findings from the study and explores how such application could be used in teaching and learning in higher education.