Abstract: Games offer people engaging and motivating experiences. The process of recreating this type of experience in systems that are not typically considered games is called “gamification.” Improving engagement and motivation in a learning environment is desired by many educators as traditional approaches do not seem to be as engaging as they once were with students. Hence, gamification may be a useful tool to improve the learning environment. As a precursor to the development of a game-like learning system, we survey 51 undergraduate IT students to obtain their perceptions on game elements, which are the building blocks of what makes a game identifiable as such. All game elements that were presented to the respondents were highly rated. It was found that undergraduate students have a positive perception of systems that use game elements and are interested in its use for learning. Overall, students favored social interaction, engagement, feedback, and increased learning, which suggests that gamification is particularly suited to learning approaches such as social constructivism. We suggest that future work should include the development of a prototype for a game-like educational system that helps to provide useful feedback for students about their learning progress.

Keywords: Student perceptions, Computer assisted education, Student expectations, Pedagogy

Download this article: JISE - Volume 25 Number 3, Page 233.pdf

Recommended Citation: Cheong, C., Filippou, J., & Cheong, F. (2014). Towards the Gamification of Learning: Investigating Student Perceptions of Game Elements. Journal of Information Systems Education, 25(3), 233-244.