The Impact of Gamification in Educational Settings on Student Learning Outcomes: A Meta-Analysis

• In Event: Systematic Reviews on Learning Technologies

Abstract

Gamification research in education has produced mixed results on student learning outcomes. The present study provides findings from a meta-analysis that integrated the empirical, quantitative research on gamification in formal educational settings. This was achieved by examining the overall effect size and identifying which gamification design elements were used with respective effect sizes. The final corpus included 30 independent studies and associated effect sizes comparing gamification to non-gamification conditions with N = 3083 participants. The overall effect size using a random-effects model is g = 0.464 in favor of the gamification condition. We examined 14 gamification design elements and showed effects on student learning outcomes respectively. We provide a discussion of our findings and recommendations for future research and practice.

Authors

• Rui Tammy Huang, University of Florida

• Albert Dieter Ritzhaupt, University of Florida

• Max Sommer, University of Florida

• Jiawen Zhu, East China Normal University

• Anita Stephen, University of Florida

• Natercia Valle, University of Florida

• John Hampton, University of Florida

• Jingwei Li, University of Florida