The Effects of Gamification on Students’ Sense of Accomplishment: A Controlled Experimental Study

Abstract

Gamification has been widely employed to enhance students’ experiences and improve learning outcomes. While gamification often yields positive results in educational settings, there are still inconsistencies in the findings, and several areas remain underexplored (e.g., impact on specific psychological experiences like the sense of accomplishment), and need further investigation. To address this gap, we conducted a controlled between-subjects experiment (N = 65) to examine the effects of gamification on students’ sense of accomplishment within a gamified learning management system. Participants were divided into an experimental group, which used a gamified version of the system, and a control group, which used the same system without gamification. Students’ sense of accomplishment was assessed using validated measures, and we employed both descriptive and inferential statistics (i.e., Mann-Whitney U test) to analyze the differences between groups. The analysis revealed no statistically significant effect of gamification on students’ sense of accomplishment (U = 436.000, Z = -1.209, p = .227), with a small effect size (r = 0.15). These findings suggest that gamification, in its current form, may not directly enhance students’ sense of accomplishment. Our study adds to the growing body of literature on game-based learning by highlighting that gamification may not universally impact all aspects of the student experience.