Improving Students' Motivation to Learn through Gamification

Abstract

Game-based learning and gamification have been used as teaching innovation to improve students learning especially in terms of improving students' motivation and intention to learn. This technique has been chosen to be applied in geoscience subject for engineering students. Generally, geoscience subject requires a lot of memorization and deep understanding about the subject matter and it lacks calculation which is seen as less attractive to the students. Therefore, gamification technique was introduced in the class to increase students' interest and motivate them to study this subject. The students were divided into small groups and they were required to do group activities throughout the semester. The learning experience was improved by giving points to each of the class activities and the use of leaderboard to show the current performance of each group. At the end of the semester, questionnaire surveys were given and a few students were called to be interviewed. The responses showed that gamification can improve students' learning and increase their motivation and interest of the subject.