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Gamification is still relatively new as a topic of research. While the use of gamification is becoming more popular, there are few systematic studies that assess and measure the impact of gamification.1 For this reason, many benefits of gamification are hypothesized rather than verified at this point. In chapter 2, we saw that gamification of learning is not identical to educational games since the latter are full-fledged games while the former is only a lightweight application that applies game elements to the learning context. But both the gamification of learning and educational games share the same process of gamifying learning elements to create the final product. Consequently, the studies that evaluated the efficacy of educational games are relevant to the discussion on the evaluation of gamification projects.
Previous studies about serious games failed to produce strong evidence for their pedagogical efficacy when compared to other instructional methods due to methodological shortcomings.2 Furthermore, assessing the effectiveness of an educational game is not a straightforward task because there are many variables to be considered such as whether a game is of the type that is most suitable for the learning content in question, whether the learning content itself is suitable for a game in the first place, students' previous knowledge about the learning content, and what their individual preferences are for a type of game.3
A Clear Goal
The examples of gamification in the previous chapter showed that gamification is currently being utilized in education and libraries for the purpose of improving user engagement and instruction. But the goals of many gamification projects do not appear to have been clearly set out before the projects began. This is probably due to the fact that gamification is still seen as a relatively new and experimental strategy. Nevertheless, considering various outcomes from a gamification project in advance and determining which outcome should be given the highest priority can greatly facilitate the evaluation and improvement process of a gamification project. Suppose that an instructor gamifies part of or all homework for a class with a leaderboard, points, teams, challenges, missions, and badges. The goal of this gamification may simply be to increase the number of students who submit the homework on time. Or the goal can be set as better...