Move in the Right Direction: Impacting Students’ Engagement With Gamification in a Programming Course
Abstract: One of the features of online learning environments is an option of an automated evaluation of programming tasks. This feature, combined with immediate feedback after every submission may support the self-progress of students in the context of programming classes. Such a system has been introduced as an additional tool within the university’s Introduction to programming course. Analysis of data originating from the system provided insight into learners’ behavior and allowed for identification that students often selectively solve assignments and skip tasks perceived by a lecturer as important. In order to change students’ behavior, the gamification approach has been utilized. A set of achievements has been introduced in order to change students’ behavior and achieve the effect of an increased number of completely solved modules. Results of the analysis show that the number of completely solved modules is significantly higher in the period when achievements have been introduced to the system for users that declared having programming experience before joining the course. This difference has not been observed for a group of beginners.