Design and evaluation of gamified questioning-based online educational applications for secondary school students

Gamification is a motivation approach that has increasingly been utilized in a variety of application domains, including technology-enhanced education, to reinforce positive user experiences. Existing research has identified benefits and drawbacks of designing gamified software for different purposes, but little has been explored about the impact that individual gamification elements can have on the learning experience of students in secondary schools. Although many pedagogical approaches have been integrated into educational software to enhance learning outcomes, motivating students through cognitively demanding activities—such as questioning—remains challenging. Gamification can address this challenge by enabling students to enjoy using educational technologies.

Thus, in this thesis I investigate the effects of combining gamification and questioning-based techniques in technology-enhanced education, to improve academic performance and learning experience in terms of software usability, user engagement, and motivation. A total of 810 students from five schools in three countries participated in the Main Study of this research. They were divided into (36) groups interacting with one of three gamification elements in two educational platforms: Knowma+ and Go-Lab. For both, I developed digital rewards in the form of points, badges, and leaderboards, which were shown to students after they had formulated questions related to an online physics lesson. Results confirmed that the gamified groups had significant differences compared to the control groups in all measures, except self-reported motivation. With the largest effect size, badges were shown to have a positive impact on students‘ perceptions of software usability, user engagement, academic performance, and questioning quality. Points and leaderboards were shown to have a more modest impact on these measures. Furthermore, results indicated that usability and user engagement were significant predictors of the learning gains. Implications are inferred from these findings, contributing to the future design and development of gamified educational software.