Gamification in Academia: Does Psychological Engagement Boost Performance?

Introduction

Gamification refers to a development in which reality becomes either intentionally or emergently more gameful (Hamari, 2019). Intentional gamification is usually pursued by implementing different kinds of essential elements of games outside games (Huotari & Hamari, 2017; Deterding et al., 2011; Landers et al., 2018). Lately, gamification has been increasingly used in schools, e-shopping, health-improvement, and other mobile applications, and work environment (Koivisto & Hamari, 2019).

There are several ways to taxonomize and typify game design elements such as into dynamics, mechanics, and elements (Werbach & Hunter, 2012). Another way is designing the elements in accordance with the HEXAD typology of players (Marczewski, 2015). It can also be based on feedback type (personal, performance, social, fictional, and ecological) (Toda et al., 2019). However, one of the canonical ways has been to perceive three primary types of game design and gamification for that matter; achievement, immersion, and socialization -based (e.g., Yee 2006; Koivisto & Hamari 2019; Xi & Hamari, 2012).

In work environments, gamification is often used to increase engagement and motivation and to improve performance (Huotari & Hamari, 2017), during training (Kampker, 2014), onboarding (Depura & Garg, 2012), and routine tasks (Anable, 2013). Based on previous research, one of the possible pathways from gamification to performance is via users’ engagement. If a gamified design of an activity or a task suits the users, their needs and the environment, users should behaviorally engage more with the gamification (actively logging in, more time-on-task, etc.), thus becoming more psychologically engaged in the underlying task itself, which leads to higher performance in that task (Kuo & Chuang, 2016). However, this proposed relation has not yet been thoroughly examined and described (Sarangi & Shah, 2015) as not much research has been done in gamification on engagement as an attitude. In the current study, the authors decided to use a gamification design (challenges and achievements) which is suitable for academic environment (Çakıroğlu et al., 2017; Kuo & Chuang, 2016), and assess its relation to performance with regards to behavioral and attitudinal engagement. Specifically, the authors observed the supposed mediating effect of engagement on performance.