Effectiveness of gamified intelligent tutoring in physical education through the lens of self-determination theory

Abstract

Scholars have recommended the application of an intelligent tutoring and instant feedback system (ITIFS) to enhance students' motor skills performance by automatically evaluating their learning performance and providing personalized guidance and feedback. However, solely providing personalized evaluation and feedback may not necessarily attract students' active and sustained engagement in practice. In particular, it is difficult to arouse students' enthusiasm to participate in sports that require repetitive practice to improve their physical abilities and which involve less interaction with the environment and their opponents. To address this issue, grounded in self-determination theory (SDT), the present study integrated a gamification mechanism that aligned with students' psychological needs into an ITIFS. The gamification features included avatars, achievements (personal ratings and rankings), badges, levels, and social networks (group ratings and rankings). It aimed to attract students to engage continuously in practice, and to address the issue of students lacking motivation to engage in repeated practice. To investigate the effectiveness of the proposed method, a quasi-experimental research design was adopted, and the collected data were analyzed with analysis of covariance (ANCOVA), independent samples t tests and qualitative coding. Four classes of university students participated in the experiment. Two classes (N = 80) were the experimental group adopting the SDT-based gamified ITIFS (G-ITIFS), and the other two classes (N = 76) were the control group adopting the conventional ITIFS (C-ITIFS). The findings indicated that the experimental group showed significantly better yoga skills performance and learning engagement compared to the control group. Feedback from students also revealed that the gamification mechanism provided more excitement and had positive impacts, satisfying students’ psychological needs and reinforcing the learning benefits. The findings of the present study revealed that, from the perspective of SDT, incorporating gamification elements into the development of ITIFS could be a promising approach for physical education. Therefore, it is strongly encouraged that educators promote such a gamified intelligent tutoring mode in physical education curriculums as it is crucial to the development of students' physical and mental health, as well as to their enthusiasm to participate in sports.