Gamifying Digital Learning Platform for Information Security Awareness

Gamification, the process of integrating the "fun" aspect commonly found in a videogame to mundane processes like learning to make it more interesting. In this research, an undergraduate university student in Thailand is assigned into two separate groups: A and B. Group A designated as "Gamified Group" is to study the topic of information security via educational videogame. Group B designated as "Traditional Group" is to study the same topic via provided paper-based material. After that, both groups are to test their understanding of the topic by doing quizzes. We found that while gamified group expressed more interest and more actively participate in this experiment compared to the traditional group, the average test score from both groups is comparable to each other with further experiments shown that undergraduate students in their senior year from both groups achieved higher average score than first-year student likely due to their familiarity with information security from coursework they took during years of their study. This research proved that videogames can be used as a tool in a higher education environment, with the possibility of developing better education videogames with increasing efficiency and make them more appealing to the masses.