Moodle's Modern Gamification Toolbox: A Practical Application

Abstract

Over the recent past a lot of work has been done around the topic of gamifying online learning. There are a number of useful papers discussing either the benefits of the process or the details of how to carry it out but there seem to be few dealing with both. In this paper the authors present the results of a lengthy research process which has culminated in the implementation and the delivery of a fully gamified Moodle-based course. The questions the researchers have addressed in their work attempt to determine the kind of influence gamification can have on the process of learning. In the experiment they have conducted, the gamified version of a key university course is delivered to a test group of 65 students, whereas a control group of 125 students takes the regular non-gamified version of the same course. The presentation of their work starts with an introduction to the key concepts and a review of some of the work done already, followed by a discussion of the complete set of gamification tools currently available in Moodle. The gamification of the UX Design course is then described in detail. Finally, the authors discuss the results of the experiment they have conducted and draw some conclusions that link the use of gamification to increased student motivation and engagement in the course, a lower level of attrition, and a significantly improved student success rate.