Gaming the Lecture Hall: Using Social Gamification to Enhance Student Motivation and Participation

The traditional lecture is a teaching format that offers students few opportunities for interaction turning them into passive listeners of the lecturers' presentations what negatively impacts on their learning. With audience response systems, that is technology supporting classroom quizzes, breaks that re-activate the students can be introduced into the lecturers' presentations. This article reports on an audience response system coupled with a social gamification of quizzes based on teams: Each student is assigned to a team and the students' answers to quizzes contribute to their teams' success. An immediate overview of responses to quiz questions and the team standings motivates students to participate in the quizzes. The contribution of this article is threefold: First, a team-based social gamification of quizzes aimed at boosting participation in quizzes and attendance at lectures, second, original technological tools supporting the proposed team-based social gamification, and third, an evaluation of the approach demonstrating its effectiveness.