Gamification in Education and Learning

Gamification is the application of game design elements in a non-gaming environment to promote outcomes, such as enhanced motivation, engagement, performance, and behaviour alteration. As such, it seems a valuable and innovative tool to implement in education and assist students in their learning process, especially when learning content does not inherently interest them. Although the concept is similar to game-based learning, simulations, and serious games, it should not be used as a synonym as in gamification no games are involved. The use of game mechanics, dynamics, and aesthetics is hypothesised to motivate students through satisfying their basic human needs of competency, autonomy, and relatedness, so the paper presents the self-determination theory as its theoretical framework. Despite its novelty, the approach seems to be increasingly gaining popularity and acceptance in both research and practice. Most studies report positive outcomes for students after the implementation of game elements, but more research is needed in order to clarify how they work and what is the best way to apply them to get to the desired results. Many game elements can be applied quickly and effortlessly to the teaching material but gamifying a learning process is much more complex than adding scoring and ranking systems. The paper summarizes the implementation methods typically used in educational settings and addresses some of their limitations.