User-Centered Gamification for E-Learning Systems: A Quantitative and Qualitative Analysis of its Application

Abstract

Gamification applies game elements in non-game contexts to improve users’ experience. One of the contexts that have mostly taken advantage of gamification is the educational one. However, the students’ experience is unique, since it varies according to their profile. Therefore, the individualities of each student must be considered to improve the students’ experience. This paper aims to explore the gamification properties and analyze the results of the user-centered application. For this, we proposed a framework focused on the user-centered gamification in the educational context, taking into account personal, functional, psychological, temporal, playful, implementable and evaluative properties. After applying the framework in the e-learning system, the controlled experiment with 139 students revealed an increase in students’ interaction, engagement and satisfaction. Thus, our main contributions are the improvement of the students’ experience with the user-centered gamification and the definition of a framework to assist in its application.

RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTS

• This paper proposes a user-centered gamification framework for educational context

• It has been applied in an e-learning system and a controlled experiment was conducted

• A total of 139 students enrolled for an online course, and half of them used the gamified version

• Results indicate an increase in the students’ interaction, engagement and satisfaction