The Efficacy of Gamification for the Involvement of Students in Distance Education

Introduction

In the contemporary educational scenario, students’ lack of interest, motivation and engagement are identified both face-to-face and Distance Learning (DL) contexts. Student motivation and engagement during learning processes is a relevant problematic to study, since the more the student is involved and motivated to learn, the more likely it is to occur (Rahman et al., 2018). In this sense, institutions have been seeking to take advantage of techniques and tools to engage students and, thus, to enable more effective teaching and learning processes (Rahman et al., 2018). In addition, the digital culture pervasiveness has been prompting researchers and teachers to develop methods that integrate digital technologies, such as digital games, with teaching and learning processes (Gee, 2003; Zichermann & Cunningham, 2011; Prensky, 2012).

Regarding DL, it is seen as an educational modality in which the pedagogical mediation processes take place through digital technologies, where teachers and students may be in diverse geographic environments and time zones (Moore & Kearsley, 2007). In addition, the pedagogical processes that occur in DL are different from those that occur in face-to-face environments, thus requiring adequate planning, focused on this modality’s specific needs.

In the last few years, DL has been moving into the spotlight and expanding through the occupation of spaces that face-to-face educational processes are unable to fill in. For example, it allows students to be more active in the teaching and learning processes through the development of their autonomy while building their own knowledge (Moore & Kearsley, 2007). The demand for methods that increase students' motivation and engagement in the construction of knowledge becomes urgent, which brings us back to methodologies that involve digital games’ elements, such as gamification.

In the student motivation and engagement perspective, a relevant aspect of gamification is the narrative, with the ability to promote playful scenarios that can favor the construction of knowledge. What is sought is that students become involved in a universe in which learning becomes less tiring than in methods focused on content exposure, for example (Domínguez et al., 2013). Another issue to highlight is the game balance, which requires, for instance, finding the balance between the player's skills and the challenges that are presented to him. This balance provides a more intense immersive experience, in which the player remains in a state of flux of constant challenge, between the borders of boredom and anxiety, according to the Flow theory (Csikszentmihalyi, 2008). Consequently, the balance of the game promotes motivation in the player to advance in what is proposed, helping him/her in the improvement or acquisition of skills, as well as in the construction of knowledge (Whitson & Consoli, 2009). In this sense, developing gamification in educational environments, aiming to promote student involvement in teaching and learning processes, has been a fertile field for research with promising results for teachers and students (Swacha, 2021).

It is in the above presented perspective that gamification fits as a method that uses the elements of games in non-game environments to promote engagement and motivation among those involved (Kapp, 2012). Going deeper into the educational dimension, it is worth mentioning that gamification not only intents to motivate and engage students, but it also aims at learning processes based on the interaction between those involved, the technologies and the context in which they are inserted (Pimentel, 2018). In this way, teaching and learning processes may integrate game elements to promote student success (Al-Azawi et al., 2016).