Abstract:

Gamification implies the application of principles and elements of the game in a learning environment with the purpose of influencing behavior, increasing motivation and promoting student participation (OIE, 2016). The present research focuses on testing whether gamification influences on the final score obtained in a fourth year Psychology subject. The total number of enrolled students was 44. However, only 33 attended the teaching sessions regularly (many of them were simultaneously attending their university placement). They participated in 7 different activities which allowed them to obtain 21 “stars”. An additional star could be obtained at the end of the academic course, by completing a questionnaire about the utility of the methodology employed. The list of awards agreed to at the beginning of the course for those who could redeem the stars included 0.5 or 0.25 additional scores, or one correct answer in the final exam, or skipping participation in the oral presentation of the final project. The correlation analysis showed that the number of stars obtained and the students’ self-attribution of “gamification as a way of being up to date with the subject“ correlated significantly with the score obtained in the theory exam (r = .40, p < .001 and .52, p < .001, respectively). These results suggest that using gamification could influence the scores obtained. This may be due to an increase in the time students dedicated to the subject along the course. However, these results should be interpreted with caution as the sample size was small. Moreover, causation cannot be inferred in a correlational design.

Keywords:

Gamification, Psychology degree, empirical.