So Fun It Hurts - Gamifying an Engineering Course

Good games are good motivators by nature, as they make players feel rewarded and fulfilled, which pushes them forward to persist and resist frustration. Gamification is a novel technique that uses game elements like points and badges, to motivated and engage users into embracing new behaviors, such as improving one’s health condition, finances or productivity. In this paper, we present an experiment in which an MSc college course was gamified to improve student interest and engagement. The gamified course led to better learning results and participation. However, there were several negative side effects that detracted from the overall experience. We will describe them, identifying their causes and describe possible alternatives to better tailor the gamified experience, stemming from the analysis of the data gathered so far.