Students' Approaches to Learning in a Gamified Course in Higher Education

Abstract

Gamification is the use of game elements in nongame contexts to increase user engagement with a system. In education, especially in Higher Education, gamification is considered a promising strategy to motivate students and promote their involvement in learning activities. To be effective, gamification needs to consider students' differences and adapt to their needs and preferences. In this paper, we propose the use of Students' Approaches to Learning to differentiate learners and analyse their preferences for gamification elements. The study was carried out in a gamified postgraduate course in engineering. We present a statistical analysis of the correlation between students approaches to learning, academic success, engagement, and appreciation of gamification elements.