Impacting the Submission Timing of Student Work Using Gamification

Abstract

Peer code review is not a standard activity within university programming courses. Educators are interested in implementing peer code review because it benefits students by developing their programming skills. One important challenge to address is how to motivate students to engage with the activity. In this study, we explore gamification as an approach for motivating students to manage their review submission time through the use of game elements and mechanics. We conducted a randomised controlled study and explored the review submission time from the log data and survey data. We found that the combination of game elements (i.e., battery, points, leaderboard) influenced students in the gamification group to better manage their review submission time by spreading the review submissions over the review period. These findings can assist academics and educators in understanding how selected game mechanics can assist in motivating students to distribute their review work more evenly over the course time period.