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Gamification is designed to use game-based elements to teach students specific learning outcomes (Dicheva, Dichev, Agre, & Angelova, 2015; Mora, Riera, Gonzalez, & Arnedo-Moreno, 2017). A review of the gamification literature highlighted some of the most common game-based elements used in education: points, levels/stages, badges, leaderboards, prizes/rewards, progress bars, storylines, and feedback (Brull & Finlayson, 2016; Nah, Zeng, Telaprolu, Ayyappa, & Eschenbrenner, 2014). Gamification allows educators to integrate a few or many of these game-based elements into a learning environment. Similar to game-based environments, gamification aims to increase student motivation and engagement during their learning by providing challenging goals (Faiella & Ricciardi, 2015). However, these two approaches differ on their foundations: game-based learning uses the game environment to teach specific learner outcomes, while gamification focuses on using game-based elements in an education context (Nah et al., 2014; Oritz, Chiluiza, & Valcke, 2016). Similar to game-based learning, many studies have indicated that gamification increased students’ affect and cognition (Dicheva et al. 2015; Mora et al., 2017).
There are many gamification frameworks that are used to implement game-based elements into various learning contexts (Mora et al., 2017). A systemic review of over 2000 gamification publications revealed that the Mechanics-Dynamics-Aesthetics (MDA) framework is one of the more popular frameworks that is used (Hunicke et al., 2004). The MDA framework is a formal structuralist approach that bridges the complexities of game development, player criticism, and design research by breaking down games into three components: mechanics (i.e., rules), dynamics (i.e., system), and aesthetics (i.e., affective response; Hunicke et al., 2004). Many gamification frameworks, such as the MDA, focus on developing an immersive and interactive learning environment which takes into account all the different and inter-related game components together to form one system. The focus here is on one gamified system which is designed with student needs at the forefront (Deterding, Sicart, Nacke, O'Hara, & Dixon, 2011). These gamified systems focus on the holistic picture of gamification which provide students with meaningful choices in the pursuit of interesting challenges instead of the mundane game elements such as points, badges, and leaderboards (Deterding, 2012).
While some gamification scholars have indicated the importance of designing the entire learning environment as one holistic system, others have taken a more compartmentalized approach by integrating a few game-based elements into a learning environment at one time (Mora et al., 2017). While the frameworks that are identified in the literature do not indicate a specific number of game-based elements that should be integrated into a learning environment (Mora et al., 2017), most gamification studies often use two or more elements at the same time to improve students’ learning (Dicheva et al., 2015). Although many of the studies that integrated multiple elements into the learning environment produced the desired result of increased understanding of learning outcomes (Abramovich, Schunn, & Higashi, 2013; Morrison & DeSalvo, 2014), a review of these studies indicated a need to investigate each game-based element individually to better understand how each of these elements impacts education (Faiella & Ricciardi, 2015). As such, this study aims to investigate only one game-based element – gamification of formative feedback – on student learning in the classroom.