Learning Analytics and Perceived Experience of Gamifying

Homework Assignments

Ahmed Hosny Saleh Metwally

, Ahmed Mohamed Fahmy Yousef

and Wang Yining

School of Information Science and Technology, Northeast Normal University, Changchun, China

Faculty of Specific Education, Educational Technology Department, Fayoum University, Egypt

School of Media Science, Northeast Normal University, Changchun, China

Keywords: Gamification, Gamifying Homework, Gamifying Assignments, Gameful Experience, Game Design Elements,

Learning Analytics, Evaluation, User Experience, Satisfaction, Student Computer Interaction.

Abstract: The purpose of this research is to assist the primary school students to complete their homework assignments,

and understanding students’ interpretation of gameplay experience and defining their satisfaction with

gamification elements while playing online homework assignments. The implementation of

the gamified homework followed the instructional design processes. The subsequent evaluation from a cohort

of students comprised learning analytics besides surveying students’ experience. The results indicated that

they were satisfied with completing the homework with the employed game design elements where they were

active and focused. In addition, they showed a tendency to challenges that involved in the treatment. One of

the more significant findings to emerge from this study is that the micro gamification design approach has

promoted the perception of motivation and enjoyment to take into consideration the design principles of the

approach.

1 INTRODUCTION

Technology Enhanced Learning (TEL) constantly

encourages new learning methodologies by using

emerging applications and approaches as the

foundation for this type of development.

Gamification is one of these promising applications

which motivates learners to achieve the learning

objectives. More recent attention has focused on the

provision of gamification applications in different

fields (Çeker & Özdamli, 2017). Thus, gamification

is a multidisciplinary field which has the most portion

of literature in Information and Computing Science

and Technology, and Education (O’Donnell et al.,

2017); (Kasurinen & Knutas, 2018). Gamification

could help students for achieving complicated tasks

with using proper strategy and software (Çeker &

Özdamli, 2017). There are many reasons to use

gamification in learning that include making the hard

work and tasks more enjoyable, increasing

participation, satisfaction and motivation, and

satisfying learners’ needs and help them to be active

learners (Çeker & Özdamli, 2017).

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9545-5870

https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0522-0734

Recent developments in gamification have

heightened the importance of understanding the

method of gamifying an educational activity in

specific context besides the impact of gamification

elements including game mechanics and dynamics

(Dichev & Dicheva, 2017). The literature also

recommends conducting more empirical research to

prove the effect of gamification and learning

performance by focusing on the effect of specific

elements (Ortiz-Rojas, Chiluiza, & Valcke, 2017).

Given these concerns, gamifying the homework

assignments is one of the interesting topics which

seeks to make the homework enjoyable for

encouraging students to achieve it by applying

gamification elements with different kinds of

assignments. The research results revealed that

students were enjoying the homework using

gamification elements in the web-based homework

(Goehle & Wagaman, 2015). Gamifying homework

through using online platform had a positive impact

on student motivation due to receiving feedback on

their homework (Butler & Bodnar, 2017). Gamifying

homework, in general, had positive findings for

Metwally, A., Yousef, A. and Yining, W.

Learning Analytics and Perceived Experience of Gamifying Homework Assignments.

DOI: 10.5220/0009818606730683

In Proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Computer Supported Education (CSEDU 2020), pages 673-683

ISBN: 978-989-758-417-6

673

increasing the motivation and engagement of students

to overcome the boring homework assignments

through using this novel approach.

This research is a third iteration of detecting and

tracking the results of gamifying homework where we

figured out the positive impact of the last iterations

(Metwally, Yousef, & Yining, 2019). We seek in this

research to recognize students’ perception and

identify their satisfactions of game elements when

gamifying homework assignments online in an

attempt of deep understanding of gamifying

homework investigation. We introduce the micro

gamification design approach as a novel design

approach for gamifying learning assignments. This

research contributes to the current body of

gamification literature in education by investigating

and evaluating students’ perceptions and experience

of achieving gamified homework. This research also

allowed us to analyse the homework completion,

students’ achievement analysis regarding the

awarded points and badges. In addition, it gives an

insight into the design considerations through

approaching a micro gamification design.

Along these lines, the present research was

examined the following research questions:

 What is the completion rate of gamified

homework regarding the final score and

number of students?

 What are students’ achievements of gamified

homework regarding the total score and

badges?

 What are students’ feedback on gamified

homework on the platform?

 How do students perceive gameful experience

in the gamified homework assignments?

These are the main research questions seeking

answers through the implementation and evaluation

of the intervention. Evaluation results give positive

indicators to all four questions, denoting a strong

potential for the effect of gamifying homework.

2 BACKGROUND AND RELATED

WORK

2.1 State of the Art

Over the past few years, there is a growing set of

contributions in gamification research. “Gamification

is not just a technology but also a methodology which

some organizations adopt as a way to increase

motivation” (Dichev & Dicheva, 2017). Gamification

has been implemented in business, health,

crowdsourcing, and other fields including education.

The vast majority of gamification research is located

in education (Koivisto & Hamari, 2019).

Gamification had positive effects on the engagement

of elementary school students (da Rocha Seixas,

Gomes, & de Melo Filho, 2016). It also has a positive

effect on student motivation and attitude changes

(Dreimane, 2019). However, it should be used with

carefulness. Although using extrinsic rewards could

help for promoting the motivation, it could harm and

minimize intrinsic motivations and affect individual

motivation (Busarello, Ulbricht, Fadel, & Andiara

Valentina de Freitas e Lopes, 2016). Thus, “Extrinsic

reward systems work for nonintrinsically engaging

activities method”. (Werbach & Hunter, 2012).

Regarding the game elements, the published

literature reported the most used game elements

which are: badges followed by leaderboard, point,

level, besides rewards and achievement whereas other

game elements rarely used like quest, progress bar,

avatar, challenge, narrative (Sümer & Aydın, 2018);

(Peixoto & Silva, 2017). Even so, there is no full

agreement on the positive outcomes of points, badges,

leaderboard which depend on the way of applying

these elements (Tenório, Reinaldo, Góis, Lopes, &

Guataçara dos Santos Junior, 2017). Furthermore, the

effect of leaderboard found different views in virtual

learning environments and has been stated negative

consequences in a higher number of studies (Tenório

et al., 2017). Regarding the objectives of using

gamification in education, it is obvious that

engagement, motivation and involvement were the

most targeted objectives while the literature

encompassed other objectives like support, promote

the interaction, increase satisfaction, behavior

changing (Peixoto & Silva, 2017).

The finding tried to recognize the effect of the

gamified homework regarding the gamification

elements; however, there is a need for more

investigation of identifying the affordances which

have a specific effect, and the reasons of particular

game elements effects as extrinsic or intrinsic

motivators in a specific context (Koivisto & Hamari,

2019); (Mekler, Brühlmann, Tuch, & Opwis, 2017).

Consequently, Future studies could search the effect

of mediated variables like learning styles and

evaluating the perceived experience regarding these

variables which would open a new direction to

propose new design approaches. Studying goal types

like specific, difficult weather will be the same in a

gamified environment, single or multiple goals

(Landers, Bauer, Callan, & Armstrong, 2015),

especially with the homework activities.

GonCPL 2020 - Special Session on Gamiﬁcation on Computer Programming Learning

674

2.2 Gamifying Homework

Homework is one of the crucial aspects of promoting

the learning process. Assigning homework exercises

for students intends boosting the learning experience

and supporting the behavior changes. The education

practices nowadays refer to the perceived negative

attitude of the homework because it is not interesting

for students and they feel bored when they have to

complete it. Gamifying homework is one of the

effective strategies of dealing with this problem.

Achieving the homework assignments is interesting if

the homework is formed as a game with using

gamification elements and game design techniques.

Gamifying homework is the process of implementing

gamification elements and game design with

homework exercises and learning assignments for

helping learners to enjoy doing their homework. This

way, there are promising endeavors concerned

applying gamification and investigated the impact of

using gamification and game design elements for

completing homework assignments. Implementing

gamification for homework of primary school

students promoted satisfaction, behavioral intention

and intrinsic motivation positively, and students felt

enjoying when they completed their homework

(Metwally et al., 2019). The gamified homework of

university engineering students through an online

gamification platform made them feel empowered,

interested, and motivated besides they found it useful

to their learning and for accomplishing the assigned

tasks (Kulhanek, Butler, & Bodnar, 2019).

Regarding gamification elements in homework,

levels and achievements in online mathematics

homework supported students to focus on their goals

of accomplishing assignments and tracking their level

and achievements with the feeling of enjoyment

(Goehle, 2013). Badges in the online homework

system were useful for undergraduate students to

submit their homework before the deadline (Uanhoro,

Young, & Lin, 2016). In addition, achievement

badges motivated computer science university

students in some aspects of their behavior when they

completed their homework exercises (Hakulinen,

Auvinen, & Korhonen, 2015). Gamification elements

like experience points (XP), leaderboards, badges,

levels, achievements, progress bars, and awards have

been used in a gamified homework portal for

engineering students which was designed around

quests, the results referred to the gamified

environment had an impartial impact on students’

academic motivation towards homework, and the

platform enforced student motivation due to receiving

continued feedback on their homework (Butler &

Bodnar, 2017). Using different gamification elements

in the homework context contributed to improving

homework completion rates and increased the

motivation to achieve it. However, examining its

impact by tracking and analysing the data

sequentially and thinking of new design approaches

to overcome the lack of common approaches are

worthy matters. Thus, this research seeks to recognize

students’ perception and identify their satisfactions of

game elements when gamifying homework

assignments online and identify the most useful

elements when applying with homework of primary

school students.

3 METHODOLOGY

This research is derivative from broader research that

aims at investigating the impact of gamifying learning

activities and forming the best practices of

instructional design processes in an educational

context. Quantitative and qualitative methodologies

were applied to understand the users’ experience and

perception of applied gamification in their

assignments. Formative evaluation research was

implemented which is a kind of developmental

research for designing instructional practices or

processes (Reigeluth & Frick, 1999) due to the

iterative nature in this research for investigation and

evaluation of game elements according to students’

perceptions.

3.1 Setup

This part concludes the research setting of achieving

gamified homework experience on the web. The

process of gamified homework begins with selecting

a unit of the English course of the sixth-grade primary

school.

3.1.1 Instructional Design

We conducted preliminary procedures like analysing

the content of the unit from the student’s textbook,

searching on the web for the educational resources

which would be useful for setting different kinds of

the questions and coming up with creating interesting

types of the questions to fit the innovative design, and

asking the English teacher for the homework

assignments. There are a variety of questions types to

reflect the required English skills that include

listening, writing, reading skills. Thus, the home-

work has been formed into main exercises which

are a reflection of the unit construction to include

Learning Analytics and Perceived Experience of Gamifying Homework Assignments

675

Table 1: The instructional design scenario of gamifying homework.

Exercise Name Question Type No. of Questions Level of Difficulty Points (Total) Level Badge

Conversation time Multiple Choice 4 Easy 20 One

conversation time, listening time, word time, focus

time, practice time, and reading time. We developed

a new form of gamification scenario to be used for

gamifying homework exercise which encompasses

the instructional design of homework and the related

game mechanics as shown in table 1. In other words,

gamifying homework entails defining the exercise

name which likely concerns on one skill, question

type, number of questions, the level of difficulty to set

the equivalent number of points, the total number of

points, the level name, and the badge. We proposed

and implemented a novel design approach which is

“Micro Gamification Design Approach”. It is a

proposed approach for designing gameful experience

resulted from our efforts in previous iterations and the

observation of students’ behavior and their feedback.

We opt for the short player journey and the simple

task with a specific objective and reward mechanism

that encourages students to achieve many tasks with

a passion for achievement and motivation (Metwally,

Yousef, & Yining, 2020, in press).

3.1.2 Setting

For executing this experience, we adopted an online

gamification platform “Seppo” which is an

innovative tool for creating educational games and

designed to help the instructors to create the game

tasks and develop gamification experience for their

students. The gamified homework on the platform

consisted of nine micro gamified exercises distributed

into four levels where students were advancing their

level when they answered the exercises. Students

were able to use the mouse and keyboard to navigate

the gamified interface which inspired from a famous

game (see figure 1).

They used mobile devices to log in and answer the

homework. There are convenient sets of gamification

element were implemented such as points, badges,

leaderboard, time constraints, challenges,

progression, chance, locked items, mission, and win

state, as shown in table 2. The initial test has been

conducted by inviting researchers and English

teachers to log in and try using the system for

collecting their feedback on the design and the ease

of using the system. This test aimed at tracking any

Table 2: The game elements list.

Elements Description

Points

Refer to the score which used to measure

student’s performance after answering the

exercise. Obtained as a reward for achieving

goals.

Badge

Kind of visual feedback to praise the student’s

specific actions if they gained points or

completed their homework under different

conditions to reward them.

Level

Gradual systems for the player to obtain new

advantages as they advance. Mastering new

advanced level represents the progress toward

achieving the goal.

Progression

The visual map to recognize to what extent the

student completes the homewor

Challenge

Advanced exercises that require more concern

and skills to

eanswe

ed correctly.

Chance

The function enables students to try again to

answer questions in case they answered

wrong.

Time

Constraints

The limited time to answer some exercises like

a countdown timer.

Locked

Items

Items need action for unlocking such as the

exercises that require typing the code to open.

Scoreboard

Shows the performance of every student

available to others and is useful to maintain

competition among students.

Feedback

The message that shows the result of the

student’s response when answering the

exercises to indicate whether it was right or

wrong.

Gameboard

and Game

World

The element which has the context or story

encompassing all the assignments and enables

to move and explore the experience like the

interface that appears after logging in and

includes the homework exercises.

Win State

The state upon completing all the exercises

and the feeling of accomplishing the

homework with receiving a prize.

Mission/Goal

It means having a clear goal to complete the

assignment, for example, answering all

exercises, collecting points and badges to

achieve the mission.

Increasing

Difficulty

The gradient in the level of questions

difficulty. The easy questions in the beginning

then increasing the level of difficulty.

Notifications

That appears after answering the questions and

getting points or badges to notify the student.

On-boarding/

Tutorials

Gentle introduction and instructions of

playing for completing the assignments and

using the other game elements.

GonCPL 2020 - Special Session on Gamiﬁcation on Computer Programming Learning

676

possible errors during the use. We created accounts

for the participants and invited them to log in to the

platform where they can complete their homework

with using the gamification elements.

3.2 Participants

Before running the research implementation, we

obtained consent from the students’ parents and their

teachers and informed them that the collected data

would be anonymous and secure, and they are free to

withdraw from the experiment at any time. After

obtaining informed consent, the treatment has been

conducted with 14 valid responses of sixth-grade

primary school students making the study’s sample

size N = 14.

3.3 Instrumentation and Data

Collection Tools

Based on the research objectives, the data collection

tools investigated the quantitative and qualitative data

the data were gathered via the archived records of

student’s activities on the platform with a detailed

analysis of the completion rates of homework

exercises. Furthermore, a quick survey on the

platform used for realizing students’ feedback on

gamified homework on the platform. To evaluate

students’ perception and experience of gamified

homework, and identify their preferences of

gamification elements, they were asked to answer an

online self-reported questionnaire divided into two

sections where the first section focused on

gamification elements and included questions related

to their perceptions of using the gamification

elements with a 3-point visual scale ranging from

happy to sad to describe their satisfaction and feeling

of doing homework. The second section focused on

the reflected experience of using the platform

included open-ended questions for clarifying the

positive aspects of the gamified homework, and

whether they had problems or recommendations for

the future enhancement, adopted from (Yanfi, Udjaja,

& Sari, 2017). All participants data were kept

maintaining anonymous and confidential.

3.4 Procedure

After obtaining approval from the participants and

their parents, the researchers hold an introductory

session for the students to introduce the platform and

give the instructions of logging and using the

elements besides the possibility of previewing the full

instructions after the logging. We asked the students

Figure 1: The interfaces of gamifying homework.

to log in on the platform to answer the homework

exercises by using their account from their personal

computer or the mobile device. They can collect

points and badges, preview and observing their rank

on the leaderboard besides the other game elements.

Students were encouraged to contact the teacher and

researchers at any time through using the online chat

on the platform if they faced a problem and need

support. To identify their feedback for using the

platform, they answered a quick survey appeared

during they answer the exercises. After achieving the

homework, we measured the students’ perception of

gamified homework through online questionnaire

consisted of two parts. The first part tackled questions

related to their perceptions of using the gamification

elements with a 3-point visual scale ranging from

happy to sad to describe how they felt about doing

homework. The second part included open-ended

questions for clarifying the positive aspects of the

gamified homework and whether they had problems

or recommendations for future enhancement.

4 RESULTS

The Evaluation methodology falls under three

headings: learning analytics, students’ feedback of

gamified homework on the platform, and students’

perception of gameful experience on the platform.

The following sections will describe in more details

the study findings.

4.1 Learning Analytics

Regarding the participants’ activities of completion

the gamified homework, of the 14 students, 9 (64.3%)

Learning Analytics and Perceived Experience of Gamifying Homework Assignments

677

who achieved the gamified homework and rewarded

(60% or above) of the final score at least (180 points

of the total 300 points) where (M =178.21, SD=

82.48). This observed finding refers to that

gamification mechanics could be motivational

affordance to push the students to complete their

homework but does not guarantee academic

performance.

Figure 2: The completion percentage of homework

exercises (N = 14).

Regarding the completion percentage as shown in

figure 2, there is a slight drop in completing or

submitting an exercise which is restrained with the

time to submit the answer, for example, there are (7)

students who completed the exercise which is

constrained by the time count successfully while there

are (4) students could not submit the answer before

the ending time so the system did not reward them.

The highest completion percentages manifested in the

first exercise which could be interpreted as this

exercise is the first one on the board game.

Regarding the average points for every exercise,

there is a significant difference between the average

points and the maximum number of points of two

exercises. The first one is the “word time” exercise

which its questions were focused on new vocabularies

that require more concentration to avoid confusion

when answering. The second one is the time-

restricted exercise “Practice Time (3)” that could

reduce the points if the answers have not been

submitted before the time ends as shown in figure 3.

Regarding the achievement of each student

according to their rank on the leaderboard, there is a

correlation between the total number of answered

exercises and the total score which reached (0.93).

Moreover, the correlation between the total number

of answered exercises and the total number of badges

(0.99), that indicates the consistency of operating the

awarding system with the effort of accomplishing

homework (see figure 4).

Figure 3: The average points of homework exercises

comparing to maximum points (N = 14).

Figure 4: The achieved exercises regarding the total number

of points and badges (N = 14).

GonCPL 2020 - Special Session on Gamiﬁcation on Computer Programming Learning

678

4.2 Students’ Feedback of Gamified

Homework on the Platform

In terms of students’ experience of achieving the

homework assignments on the platform, the finding

shows that the students were excited to use the

platform for learning and accomplishing the

homework exercises. They felt active and focused as

shown in figure 5. The positive feedback from the

students showed that the gamified homework on the

platform was useful and they appreciated using the

platform to complete the homework and learning

where they felt active and focused as most aspects

they appreciated. They enjoyed the challenges as the

most feature they liked. We noticed that some

students showed an overwhelming for competing

others with the highest score on the leaderboard by

trying to edit answers to improve their score. Overall,

they liked learning and doing their homework on the

platform with the challenging spirit and answering

different kinds of questions. These features are not

available when they used to complete the assignments

in the traditional setting without using the platform. It

has evidently appeared that the effect of gamification

elements on enjoyment and motivation perception of

doing homework.

4.3 Perceived Gameful Experience

To identify and confirm the research finding, and for

a deep understanding of the individual gameful

experience of students, we analysed the data of the

self-reported questionnaire. Their response to the

questionnaire gave us an insight of the gamified

homework on the platform. Data has been gathered

from students in five different schools in Egypt. The

majority of students expressed their satisfaction of

using the following gamification elements: points,

badges, levels, progression, challenges, chance,

unlocked items, leaderboard, feedback, board game,

win state, mission/goal, increasing difficulty,

notifications, and rule as shown in figure 6. They

found these elements useful and enjoyable (Goehle,

2013), except one student who commented that

badges and levels were not useful and enjoyable;

however, student’s response was happy. Progression

was a motivated affordance to complete the

homework, and the chance was beneficial due to the

possibility of trying to answer again, as one student

stated. There is no full agreement of time constraints

element as it has been mentioned in a comment that

the time was enough for answering the exercise

unlikely it has been in the last iteration.

Figure 5: Students’ feedback of achieving the gamified

homework assignments on the platform (N = 14).

The qualitative result of students’ comments

according to the most things they liked in this

experience, the problems they faced, their evaluation

of the application and their recommendations for

development were as a following:

They admired the gamified homework including

the mentioned elements above especially the badges

(Hakulinen et al., 2015), and the possibility of

revising questions. The vast majority evaluated the

gamified homework with the full mark, they defined

the reasons for the given the score because it

keeps away from feeling the boredom, they enjoyed

Not

really

Maybe Yes Very

much

Do you like learning with the

platform?

How does playing this game

make you feel?

What do you like most in this

game?

Learning Analytics and Perceived Experience of Gamifying Homework Assignments

679

Figure 6: Students’ satisfaction of gamification elements (N

= 14).

learning English, and the homework covers different

types of questions. Some students had an expectation

of the gamified homework as a game but the concept

of gamification still not clear in their minds.

Therefore, the confusion could happen easily with

predicting the same technics of the famous games as

a game they can play.

According to the problems of using the

application, they experienced the technical problems

of the loading time. They recommended including

different types of exercise with different board

games, increasing the number of attempts for

answering, and supporting the animation features.

Below are examples of their comments.

“This apps is good”

“Yes, I like it. The learning is very well and I love

it”

“The game is very good and the questions are

easy”

“Yes, I liked very much. Badges were nice. I

enjoyed doing the homework”

Furthermore, we were interested to hear the

reflection of an English teacher about this experience

through observing students’ responses. The feedback

was optimistic in general with praising the listening

exercises and the time-constrained questions.

Competition questions played a role for motivating

students, the interface design was attractive, and the

leaderboard could support students’ motivation but

some students were eager to dominate the leaderboard

that could distract their attention from the main

objectives. The teacher appreciated the new design of

the homework for this unit which is short and simple,

that matches with the micro gamification design, and

recommended involving the questions which require

spelling new vocabularies. In addition, students

prefer to use mobile devices to complete their

homework due to the possibility of using it to open

and answer the assignment on the way.

4.4 Discussion

Analysis of students’ completion results and students’

feedback on the gamified homework on the platform

with the findings of the self-reported questionnaire

discloses that the intervention has had a detectable

positive influence on the perceived gameful

experience, including their interest of the assignments

(Pastushenko, Hruška, & Zendulka, 2018). The

successful completion of homework assignments by

the majority of students indicates that the use of

gamification elements are feasible and influential for

primary school students (Metwally et al., 2019). The

user-friendly interface was well suited for the sixth-

grade primary school. Usability of the application

promoted students to use the app through the personal

computer or mobile devices. A tacit advantage is that

students have invested using mobile devices to

complete their homework. Students achieved

homework assignments with using the motivational

affordances so it contributed to motivating but we

cannot confirm the academic achievement as it seems

does not have an effect on student performance

(Goehle & Wagaman, 2015); which it depends on

their efforts of studying. The time count element had

a controversy effect with mixed results that clearly

appeared in the exercises completion analysis, some

students need more time to think of the answers and

fail to submit, and other students have experienced

this kind of questions so they submitted the answers

before the time ends. It can be noticed in a student’s

comment when indicated that s/he submitted the

answer, unlike the last iteration.

The optimistic results of students’ feedback on the

platform concurred with the responses of the

questionnaire, they were active and focused on doing

their homework. They addressed the challenges as the

most feature they liked. It has been noticed with some

students wanted to dominate the leaderboard for

satisfying basic psychological needs. It refers to the

Points

Badges

Levels

Progression

Challenges

Chance

TimeConstraints

UnlockedItems

Leaderboard

Feedback

Boardgame

WinState

Mission/Goal

IncreasingDifficulty

Notifications

Rules

Happy Neutral Sad

GonCPL 2020 - Special Session on Gamiﬁcation on Computer Programming Learning

680

gamified homework promoted intrinsic motivation

that touched the basic psychological needs:

competence, autonomy, and relatedness (Ryan &

Deci, 2000). Nevertheless, leaderboard as an element

could carry possible unintended consequences

(Osatuyi, Osatuyi, & De La Rosa, 2018); or negative

implications (Tenório et al., 2017). Some students

tried to edit the answers to improve the score not to

learn from mistakes. Thus, this element found their

well for editing the answers with limited attempts

before showing the correct answer.

There are variances between students in

completing the exercises due to their personality

treats or the allowed time they were available to login

however, their attitude was positive towards using

game design elements in homework context. Using

different types of elements instead of implementing

one element in isolation may produce effective

behavior and it could be explained according to

conditioning theories that some elements motivate

some learners but other learners may be better

conditioned by other elements (Landers et al., 2015).

Interestingly, the propitious reflection of the

design from teachers in accordance with the micro

gamification design approach, the short exercises

with immediate rewards meet the needs for the

feeling of achievement.

5 CONCLUSIONS

This study aimed at understanding students’

interpretation of gameplay experience and defining

their satisfaction with gamification elements while

playing online homework assignments. It seeks to

introduce the micro gamification design approach as

a novel design approach for gamifying educational

assignments. The research developed the gamified

homework experience in light of the instructional

design processes to design and develop the homework

assignments with associating the gamification

elements. One of the more significant findings to

emerge from this study is that the micro gamification

design approach has promoted the perception of

motivation and enjoyment to take into consideration

the design principles of the approach. Research

questions investigated through analytics and

evaluation data refer to the completion of homework

assignments, feedback, and perceptions of the

gamification elements and gamified homework on the

platform.

On the basis of the evaluation finding, it may be

concluded that students were satisfied with

completing the gamified homework where they were

active and focused. In addition, they showed a

tendency to challenges that involved in the treatment.

Most of the gamification elements found their interest

like points, badges, progression, chance, levels but

other element had a controversial effect like

leaderboard, time constraints. Students preferred to

use mobile devices for completing the homework

rather than using a personal computer. They

recommended including different types of exercise

with different board games, increasing the number of

attempts for answering, and supporting the animation

features. The main limitations of the research are that

the small number of participants which entails more

investigation to increase the sample size and

including other school grades which could open a

new future trend to search the optimum gamification

design for different grades. As a result, it cannot be

generalized, so an additional investigation is required.

It would be noteworthy for future research endeavors

to examine the particular effects of the game elements

in different settings to approve their feasibility.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The authors would like to thank Northeast Normal

University for providing initial funding for this study.

We are also immensely grateful to Seppo team for

their helpful advice on various technical issues and

providing us with an open license with unlimited

usage during our investigation.

REFERENCES

Busarello, R. I., Ulbricht, V. R., Fadel, L. M., & Andiara

Valentina de Freitas e Lopes. (2016). Gamification

Approaches to Learning and Knowledge Development:

A Theorical Review. In Á. Rocha, A. M. Correia, H.

Adeli, L. P. Reis, & M. M. Teixeira (Eds.), New

Advances in Information Systems and Technologies.

Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing (Vol.

444, pp. 1107–1116). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-

319-31232-3

Butler, B. L., & Bodnar, C. A. (2017). Establishing the

Impact that Gamified Homework Portals Can Have on

Students’ Academic Motivation. 2017 ASEE Annual

Conference & Exposition. Columbus, Ohio.

Çeker, E., & Özdamli, F. (2017). What “gamification” is

and what it’s not. European Journal of Contemporary

Education, 6(2), 221–228. https://doi.org/10.13187/

ejced.2017.2.221

da Rocha Seixas, L., Gomes, A. S., & de Melo Filho, I. J.

(2016). Effectiveness of gamification in the

engagement of students. Computers in Human

Learning Analytics and Perceived Experience of Gamifying Homework Assignments

681

Behavior, 58, 48–63. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.

2015.11.021

Dichev, C., & Dicheva, D. (2017). Gamifying education:

what is known, what is believed and what remains

uncertain: a critical review. International Journal of

Educational Technology in Higher Education, 14(9).

https://doi.org/10.1186/s41239-017-0042-5

Dreimane, S. (2019). Gamification for Education: Review

of Current Publications. In L. Daniela (Ed.), Didactics

of Smart Pedagogy (pp. 453–464). https://doi.org/

10.1007/978-3-030-01551-0_23

Goehle, G. (2013). Gamification and Web-based

Homework. PRIMUS: Problems, Resources, and Issues

in Mathematics Undergraduate Studies, 23(3), 234–

246. https://doi.org/10.1080/10511970.2012.736451

Goehle, G., & Wagaman, J. (2015). The Impact of

Gamification in Web Based Homework. PRIMUS:

Problems, Resources, and Issues in Mathematics

Undergraduate Studies, 26(6), 557–569. https://doi.

org/10.1080/10511970.2015.1122690

Hakulinen, L., Auvinen, T., & Korhonen, A. (2015). The

Effect of Achievement Badges on Students’ Behavior:

An Empirical Study in a University-Level Computer

Science Course. International Journal of Emerging

Technologies in Learning, 10(1), 18–29. https://doi.

org/10.3991/ijet.v10i1.4221

Kasurinen, J., & Knutas, A. (2018). Publication trends in

gamification: A systematic mapping study. Computer

Science Review, 27, 33–44. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.

cosrev.2017.10.003

Koivisto, J., & Hamari, J. (2019). The rise of motivational

information systems : A review of gamification.

International Journal of Information Management, 45,

191–210. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijinfomgt.2018.10.013

Kulhanek, A., Butler, B., & Bodnar, C. A. (2019).

Motivating first-year engineering students through

gamified homework. Educational Action Research, 1–

26. https://doi.org/10.1080/09650792.2019.1635511

Landers, R. N., Bauer, K. N., Callan, R. C., & Armstrong,

M. B. (2015). Psychological Theory and the

Gamification of Learning. In Gamification in

Education and Business (pp. 165–186).

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-10208-5

Mekler, E. D., Brühlmann, F., Tuch, A. N., & Opwis, K.

(2017). Towards understanding the effects of individual

gamification elements on intrinsic motivation and

performance. Computers in Human Behavior, 71, 525–

534. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2015.08.048

Metwally, A. H. S., Yousef, A. M. F., & Yining, W. (2019).

Investigating the effects of gamifying homework on

students’ perceived satisfaction, behavioral intention

and intrinsic motivation. CEUR Workshop

Proceedings, 2359, 47–57. Levi, Finland.

Metwally, A. H. S., Yousef, A. M. F., & Yining, W. (2020,

in press). Micro Design Approach for Gamifying

Students’ Assignments. 2020 IEEE 20th International

Conference on Advanced Learning Technologies

(ICALT).

O’Donnell, N., Kappen, D. L., Fitz-Walter, Z., Deterding,

S., Nacke, L. E., & Johnson, D. (2017). How

multidisciplinary is gamification research? Results

from a scoping review. CHI PLAY 2017 Extended

Abstracts: Extended Abstracts Publication of the

Annual Symposium on Computer-Human Interaction in

Play, 445–452. https://doi.org/10.1145/3130859.3131412

Ortiz-Rojas, M., Chiluiza, K., & Valcke, M. (2017).

Gamification and Learning Performance: A Systematic

Review of the Literature. 11th European Conference on

Game-Based Learning (ECGBL), 515–522.

Osatuyi, B., Osatuyi, T., & De La Rosa, R. (2018).

Systematic review of gamification research in IS

education: A multi-method approach. Communications

of the Association for Information Systems, 42(1), 95–

124. https://doi.org/10.17705/1CAIS.04205

Pastushenko, O., Hruška, T., & Zendulka, J. (2018).

Increasing students’ motivation by using virtual

learning environments based on gamification

mechanics: Implementation and evaluation of gamified

assignments for students. Proceedings of the Sixth

International Conference on Technological Ecosystems

for Enhancing Multiculturality, 755–760.

https://doi.org/10.1145/3284179.3284310

Peixoto, M., & Silva, C. (2017). A gamification

requirements catalog for educational software: results

from a systematic literature review and a survey with

experts. Proceedings of the Symposium on Applied

Computing, 1108–1113. https://doi.org/10.1145/3019612.

3019752

Reigeluth, C. M., & Frick, T. W. (1999). Formative

research: A methodology for creating and improving

design theories. In C. M. Reigeluth (Ed.), Instructional-

Design Theories and Models: A New Paradigm of

Instructional Theory (Vol. 2, pp. 633–652).

https://doi.org/10.4324/9781410603784-35

Ryan, R. M., & Deci, E. L. (2000). Intrinsic and Extrinsic

Motivations: Classic Definitions and New Directions.

Contemporary Educational Psychology, 25(1), 54–67.

https://doi.org/10.1006/ceps.1999.1020

Sümer, M., & Aydın, C. H. (2018). Gamification in Open

and Distance Learning: A Systematic Review. In

Learning, Design, and Technology: An International

Compendium of Theory, Research, Practice, and Policy

(pp. 1–16). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-17727-

4_115-1

Tenório, M. M., Reinaldo, F. A. F., Góis, L. A., Lopes, R.

P., & Guataçara dos Santos Junior. (2017). Elements of

Gamification in Virtual Learning Environments: A

Systematic Review. ICL2017 – 20th International

Conference on Interactive Collaborative Learning,

1812–1822. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-73210-7

Uanhoro, J., Young, S. S.-C., & Lin, Y.-H. (2016).

Empirical study on the effect of digital badges in a

general physics homework system. (2016) ICCE 2016

- 24th International Conference on Computers in

Education: Think Global Act Local - Main Conference

Proceedings, 232–241.

Werbach, K., & Hunter, D. (2012). For the win: How game

thinking can revolutionize your business (1st Editio).

Philadelphia: Wharton Digital Press.

GonCPL 2020 - Special Session on Gamiﬁcation on Computer Programming Learning

682

Yanfi, Udjaja, Y., & Sari, A. C. (2017). A Gamification

Interactive Typing for Primary School Visually

Impaired Children in Indonesia. Procedia Computer

Science, 116, 638–644. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.procs.

2017.10.032

APPENDIX

Table 1: Exercises analysis.

Exercise

Students

Status

Points

Answere

Total Avera

eMin Max

Conversation Time 14 / 14 20 15.71 5 20

Listening Time 13 / 14 20 18.85 5 20

Word Time 12 / 14 50 30.83 0 50

Focus Time 12 / 14 25 16.67 10 25

Practice Time (1) 11 / 14 25 20.0 15 25

Practice Time (2) 11 / 14 40 35.45 20 40

Practice Time (3) 7 / 14 50 30.0 10 50

Reading Time (1) 11 / 14 20 16.36 10 20

Readin

Time (2) 10 / 14 40 38.0 30 40

Con

ratulation! 8 / 14 10 10.0 10 10

Learning Analytics and Perceived Experience of Gamifying Homework Assignments

683