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The Transform your Teaching podcast is a service of the Center for Teaching and Learning at Cedarville University in Cedarville, Ohio. Join Dr. Rob McDole and Dr. Jared Pyles as they seek to inspire higher education faculty to adopt innovative teaching and learning practices.
This is the Transform Your Teaching Podcast. The Transform Your Teaching Podcast is a service of the Center for Teaching and Learning at Cedarville University in Cedarville, Ohio.
Ryan:Hello, and welcome to this episode of Transform Your Teaching. In today's episode, Dr. Rob McDole and Dr. Jared Pyles discuss some success stories from gamification studies. Thanks for joining us.
Jared:Alright, Robert. We are continuing our series Have You Tried? And we are going into gamification. Just as a way of review, we have defined gamification as the use of game like elements such as points, levels, leaderboards, and storytelling to motivate learning. We're actually gonna hit into storytelling in future episodes when we talk with Doctor.
Jared:Quentin Schultz. But really, it's the idea of game like elements, and we've talked about how it's in our daily lives whether we realize it or not. You've got Kroger Fuel Points is a good one, Chick fil A app, the old Subway cards where if you bought 10 subs you got a free one, that kind of a thing.
Rob:Yeah.
Jared:So there's game like elements in our daily lives, but now we're talking about how can we put it into education.
Rob:Right. And so we're gonna go over some success stories today. And one of the kinds of things that we often think about, at least for us, is, like, how can we make the courses that we design better? Mhmm. How can we apply some of those things, like you said, Kroger fuel points?
Rob:Yeah. Which makes me wonder, what level are you in the Chick fil A app? Oh. You know, because there's, like, different levels. Right?
Jared:It is different levels.
Rob:At one time, I made it to silver. Silver? To silver.
Jared:Okay. Let me let me pull up the app and let me just see what I where I am right now. Oh, I am a signature member. I don't know what level that is. Well, maybe I am so high up that I no longer can reach any higher.
Rob:Well, it it makes a difference. Right?
Jared:Here we go. My status. Signature member. To maintain signature status, I have to earn 521 more points by the end of this year. Do you wanna know what my current number is?
Rob:Like, many points? You wanna share.
Jared:9,479 points. Woah. The family, we love the Chick fil A.
Rob:Anyway, we have several success stories that are backed by studies. So let me let me go through the first one and just let our listeners know. We'll have these in the show notes for you. Mhmm. Some may be thinking, why in the world are you providing this for us?
Rob:We're just trying to make the point to you that have you tried has some actual literature behind it. Mhmm. Alright. Our first study is the impact of gamification on students' learning, outcomes, and academic performance. A longitudinal study comparing online traditional and gamified learning by Lampropoulos and Sideropoulos 2024.
Rob:Now correct me if I'm wrong here, doctor Piles, but this particular study had to do with operating systems in their design in the IT realm or IT world. And, specifically, it's a lab class.
Jared:Yeah. It's an intro to operating systems class that they did the study in. Yeah.
Rob:Alright. So it it this study lasted for about three years, a little over a thousand students, thousand one to be precise. And they had a questionnaire, but they also looked at all of their performance data across the courses. So the results from this study show that retention in using gamified learning in traditional setting was 36% higher than just strictly traditional. And then it was 42% higher with gamification in the online environment versus just online.
Rob:Their excellence rate, what what they gave, was 23% versus traditional and then a 130% higher versus online, which that seems extremely high. Yeah. Most people would say. Mhmm. How is that possible?
Rob:Well, I think the excellent rating must not have a top level or or maybe it was really bad to begin with. So in theoretical courses, in the theoretical part of this, excellence rating went up to 79% versus traditional, a 125% versus online. So kinda here's the takeaway for everyone. Gamification consistently outperformed other models across three years. So, you know, it's it is about making the content in the course, you know, more enjoyable.
Jared:Right.
Rob:But it does actually help performance and help things stick for the student.
Jared:Yeah, that makes me wanna really wanna replicate that study to see
Rob:Could we
Jared:do it? Yeah, could we do the same thing with that? Because you know, retention is such a crucial part of higher education right now with rising costs and the flexibility of online learning and everything else. Retention is a very it's a huge variable to me that would need to be I would like to see about replicating that study or something close to it.
Rob:Well, it reminds me of what doctor Oakley said as well. Right? That most of the higher ed studies have never really truly been
Jared:validated or verified. Yeah. Validated studies. Yeah.
Rob:Because nobody goes in and actually tries to replicate them.
Jared:Right.
Rob:That's something that that she found in in her conversation with us.
Jared:And I'm sure with Chad GPT and, generative AI in general, there are so many studies being done that that validation is no one's going back and validating those because there's so much happening right now.
Rob:Yeah. Why don't you take the next one?
Jared:Sure. So this one is titled How Gamification Boosts Learning in STEM Higher Education, a mixed method study from Ortiz Rojas, Valqui and Bolanos Mendoza. This is from 2025. So in this study, they took 175 students in a self selected calculus course and they looked to see whether or not the leaderboard based gamification had an impact on their learning performance. They also looked at, the mediating roles of autonomous motivation and self efficacy.
Jared:And they also looked at, gender and gaming experience as moderators. So they did quantitative, where they looked at pretest and post test scores and did a quasi experimental design with nine qualitative interviews. The results that they found were that there was a significant improvement in learning performance for students in the gamified condition versus the control condition. However, there were no significant effects related to the mediating variable. So motivation didn't rise, self efficacy didn't rise, they didn't see that as, or lower I guess, I gotta get back at that idea, that there were no significant effects found related to that, either high or low.
Jared:So yeah, the qualitative stuff also looks like it also supported that. The students did not perceive an increase in autonomy as far as their motivation goes. The leaderboard provided a sense of achievement for most participants. And this reminds me a lot of Mentimeter and doing quizzes in there. My students are enthralled with doing review stuff using Mentimeter and doing multiple choice questions because in Mentimeter there's a leaderboard slide after every single question.
Jared:So I put it after every single one and then they see their name come up and they see the bar go from left to right as they get more points, they go faster. Then there's a leaderboard and it shows like, are the do the numbers switch or like, oh, know, this person's in Jillian's in first place now and all this other stuff. And it just they bite into it. It's it's it's incredible. So
Rob:I'm gonna have to try that because I do reviews in the class, and I just make them go cold turkey. You know? Like, here's the question. Give me the answers. Like, I'm I'm not using multiple choice at all.
Rob:Oh, really? Because I want them to recall. I'm trying to do space recall. Okay. And so I am forcing it.
Rob:But I do wonder if I might be able to tap into that a little bit more now.
Jared:It's a lot of fun, especially if you have stuff that fits better as multiple choice questions, it's a lot of fun to do that. I mean, it's hard. I I do plot level stuff for, like, Macbeth. We did act one, so we did some things like, what did Macbeth say in or what did the witches say to Macbeth in act one, scene two?
Rob:Yeah. Mine's more under structure. Right. Foundational kinds of things that I I wanna make sure that that their concepts are one, they're in their head, and two, they can recall them at a moment's notice.
Jared:Right.
Rob:I might be able to do it. I just haven't given thought to that particular aspect. Anyway.
Jared:Study three, remote learning. You wanna take this one?
Rob:So the study, gamification during COVID nineteen. What's that? Oh, it's been it's been a while ago, but it's still it prompted this
Jared:this our hearts, in some cases, our lungs.
Rob:Yeah. Gamification during COVID nineteen. Promoting active learning and motivation in higher education. Rincon Flores and Santos Guavera 2021. And it's essentially virtual teaching modalities.
Rob:So obviously, because of COVID nineteen, their study looked at gamification, you know, to use a reward based system or a strategy that can improve educational experience for students, you know, in a virtual environment.
Jared:Mhmm.
Rob:And as their abstract says, exceptional circumstances, which I think we'd all agree with. Yeah. And specifically, they were looking at calculus and the development of transversal competencies. So What is transversal competencies? Transversal competency is something that transverses from one domain to another.
Rob:So like problem solving. Uh-huh. You can learn that in math. Hopefully, you can take that. Oh.
Rob:Move over into English. Okay. And use a problem solving mentality to understand maybe the text or
Jared:Okay.
Rob:You you see what I'm saying?
Jared:Yeah. I got you.
Rob:So it's basically analysis and synthesis on a broad scale. Okay. So it the article basically states that they have two these two courses that they're working to try to provide this reward system, and it's more of a an experiment, I think. Yeah. I don't see in terms of their methodology other than they're just looking at how they perform and how they respond.
Jared:Yeah. Surveys, grades.
Rob:Yep. And then they try to see if there's any correlation between the increases and the gamification. So there's probably, based on just reading that, there's definitely some quantitative evaluation that's probably going on.
Jared:Mhmm.
Rob:Although, it doesn't really show us exactly what that is. I assume our listeners can just dig into that for their own their own edification if they choose. Basically, results. Reward based gamification improved academic performance, reduced anxiety, which that's a big deal Yeah. Definitely.
Rob:For COVID nineteen. Right?
Jared:Oh, yeah.
Rob:And they had a result of the fact that it humanized the isolated online classrooms. So I think it probably comes down to if they did something similar to what you're doing with your quizzing.
Jared:Mhmm.
Rob:They see other people doing it. Right? Right. Even if they're seeing it through a camera, if they're doing like one of those mass you know, if you recall what COVID was like and we'd have these mass meetings and you have
Jared:Yeah. Brady Bunch style
Rob:checkerboard. Yeah. Right. That you'd be looking at. So having something where you could see how you're performing against others, I could see how that would definitely humanize it.
Rob:And so, essentially, they they came away with the idea that gamification can counteract disengagement in virtual spaces. And I think, you know, we've seen that anecdotally. Yeah. Now I think it'd be a lot harder now.
Jared:Yeah. I wonder.
Rob:To replicate this study. Mhmm. I hope we never have to replicate this again. Alright. You wanna take the next one?
Jared:Sure. Yeah. So this next one is titled Higher Education Students' Assessments Towards Gamification and Sustainability colon, a case study. I always love the subtitle. I feel like that's always so great.
Jared:Could you really be super animated and creative about it, or you can be boring and be like, a case study.
Rob:A case study.
Jared:This is from Santos Vialba and Leva Olavencia, Navas Parejo, and Benitez Marquez from 2020. This study took place at the University of Malaga in Spain on the design of educational gamification and the teaching criteria that relate to gamification and its effect on students' motivation. So they sent a questionnaire to students studying for degrees in education at the University of Malaga. They got 187 surveys back, and all this brings me back to the dissertation days. They did a partial least squares structural equation modeling, and they uses that using SmartPLS.
Jared:Oh, that brings me back, Rob, to the old days of and about a year ago today, I was defending my dissertation.
Rob:Did you do a least square structural equation modeling?
Jared:I don't remember. I don't think I did.
Rob:No. I don't think you did
Jared:do I did chi square. Yeah. So that's one I remember the most. So anyway, the results were they found a positive relationship between assessment of students motivation and sustainability attitude. So basically gamification increased their motivation and showed a positive link to sustainable behavior.
Jared:The big the big takeaway is that, you know, gamification isn't really always about grades. It can also influence values and real world actions.
Rob:So Yeah.
Jared:Pretty cool.
Rob:Yeah. I think I think we're down to our last one.
Jared:We are. Number five. So, oh. Again, the titles.
Rob:I love the title. You're gonna love this title. I know. Stats Kwando. I feel like I need to even say that.
Jared:It's like Rex Kwando. Stats Kwando. Bow to your sensei.
Rob:Alright. I gotta get back on this. Stats Kwando, a case study in instructional design, multimedia, and gamification
Jared:What a great title.
Rob:By Coughlin and Huff 2022. Yep. I I didn't know if they wanted to be taken seriously or not.
Jared:I don't know. That's a good question. When
Rob:I read that title, I can hardly contain myself Yeah. To actually say it without laughing. Yeah. Me too. So I apologize to Coughlin and Huff if you
Jared:ever listen to this, but it is pretty show, Ryan.
Rob:A pretty funny title. It's a pretty funny title.
Jared:It's a good one. Okay.
Rob:Alright. So this really focused on the anxiety surrounding the taking of online statistics courses in higher education. And I think we both can agree that that is a fairly common issue.
Jared:Yeah. That's a big problem.
Rob:So yeah. There have been a lot of studies that have been conducted, you know, on the cause of math anxiety, as well as anxiety in computer based learning. And the purpose of this study was to examine whether using gamification and Meyer's multimedia principles in an asynchronous online statistics course would reduce state anxiety in learners. So, this is based off previous research, and they put gamification in, they add it to the learning environment, and they informally called this system Stats Quando.
Jared:I mean, it's
Rob:it's pretty funny. Obviously, it did its work on us just trying to get to this thing, and they basically incorporated this theme, stats kwon do, into the elements. So they had a storyline. They had achievements, applied equipment, boss battles. It sounds I mean, like
Jared:Boss battles.
Rob:That's Yeah. That's that's pretty cool.
Jared:That's so cool.
Rob:They did you know, and then they had specific multimedia principles that they used to redesign, and that relieved anxiety, such as segmenting personalization and coherence. They did this over the course of two semesters. They had two different groups of students who went through stats kwon do, and they got feedback. So I'm assuming they're doing some qualitative research here. They're getting feedback so that they could make changes in the moment.
Rob:So they did. And then they also wanted to be able to reflect. So I think this most certainly is a qualitative study. They had 1,200 comments from students and they analyzed those. So, yeah, most certainly qualitative study here.
Rob:And basically, the results were that what they could see in the feedback showed them that anxiety had dropped significantly within two weeks of starting the course.
Jared:That's incredible.
Rob:I could see that because laughter really.
Jared:Oh, yeah.
Rob:You know, even if you've got a funny theme
Jared:Mhmm.
Rob:And it's a serious course, which statistics I mean, oftentimes when people face statistics, especially if they're not gifted in math. Right? Yeah. They have a really hard time. So
Jared:Pointing to myself.
Rob:Yeah. So they were basically taking something that people could connect with, which in this case was the storytelling and the achievements, getting through the story. So almost like an RPG of sorts that they tried to kinda weave into this this course. And, basically, you know, the takeaway for for us is if you take gamification, right, and you also take strong narrative or storytelling, you put them together, it can make something that's super intimidating, like statistics seem very approachable. You can take the bad out of it to some degree.
Jared:The anxiety.
Rob:Yeah. And in this case, anxiety.
Jared:The mental blocks.
Rob:The Right.
Jared:So it kinda just brings climb.
Rob:Brings the anxiety level down. I mean, to say that you brought the anxiety level down after two weeks, that's pretty significant. Yeah. I think I would defer to our listeners, anyone who's, you know, listening who who hears this or sees this. We we encourage you to go look at the study.
Rob:And if there's anyone out there who intends to try to replicate it in their class, it would be we would love to hear your results.
Jared:I am super intrigued by this. I think we really should try to get them on, talk about it. I think it's really interesting, the idea of taking a concept like this and gamifying it. So Essentially taking the objectives of a course and completely reorganizing the course to be in a gamification style
Rob:of things. Yeah. I can think of many courses that would probably benefit from this.
Jared:Oh, agree. So yeah, so those are some success stories. We're gonna, like Rob said, we're going to link them in our, description. You can check them out. We're also going to link Mayer's 12 Principles of Multimedia because that is, super interesting, just a way of like taking learning into a multimedia level.
Jared:Super simple concepts, they're nothing too groundbreaking or whatever, but we follow that ourselves with our design of our videos at CTL and it's useful for learning as well and teaching and just teaching your class that you've got. So
Rob:Yeah. And one thing to say to our listeners and just a question to make you ponder. If you've been listening to us, hopefully, through these studies and other conversations we've had about gamification, there's at least one small element that you could think of, whether it be a leaderboard, progress bar
Jared:Yeah.
Rob:Or maybe even a narrative theme. Right? That you could try in your classroom. You know, what would it be? And, you know, hopefully, you will try it.
Rob:And if you do, would you let us know? We'd love to know how it went. We understand that with everything that our teachers have to do, whether it be k through 12 or higher ed, they got tons of stuff to do. We're not trying to just add one more. You know?
Rob:If you're not doing gamification, you're a terrible teacher. That's not what we're saying. Right. We're just trying to provide resources out there for people to to think about as they have time. And if there's a way they can put it in, we'd love to hear about it.
Jared:Yeah. It's all really about just how to serve your students best. Right. And these are just different options to find how to serve your students.
Rob:Really looking forward. This kinda, you know, pushes us forward, but I'm really looking forward to digging into storytelling because we're gonna have like you said early on, we're gonna have doctor Shultz back on the show.
Jared:Mhmm.
Rob:And he's a great storyteller.
Jared:He
Rob:is. We always enjoy listening to his stories.
Jared:Absolutely. So Yeah. We're looking forward to that as well.
Ryan:Thanks for joining this episode of Transform Your Teaching. If you have any questions or comments about some of the studies that we uncovered today, we'd be glad to hear from you. You can connect with us on LinkedIn, or you can send us an email at CTLPodcastcederville dot edu. Finally, don't forget to check out our blog at cedarville.edu/focusblog. Thanks for listening.