Gamifying Instructional Videos Did Not Lead to Better Student Comprehension

Abstract: Online learning has become a widely adopted method of education. Although it offers many benefits, it also comes with certain drawbacks. For instance, asynchronous courses provide students with flexibility, but distractions in the study environment can affect students' ability to concentrate when viewing online lectures. Moreover, students may not be motivated to continue to watch if the instructional videos are not engaging. To potentially counter this latter issue, the present study examined whether gamification could benefit online learning by improving students’ comprehension of video lecture content. A 2 (Gamification Level: Gamification or No Gamification) x 2 (Content Difficulty: Easy or Hard) mixed design was used. Participants were assigned to either a gamification condition or a non-gamification condition. For both conditions they watched instructional videos containing easy- and hard-level content and were tested on their comprehension of the video content. It was hypothesized that gamification would keep students engaged with the instructional videos, leading to higher scores on comprehension quizzes. However, results of the present study showed no effect lecture video gamification on the quiz scores. Implications of these findings for online learning are discussed.

Keywords: instructional design, online learning, gamification of educational materials

DOI: 10.54941/ahfe1006955

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