Exploring Personalization of Gamification in an Introductory Programming Course

Abstract

Gamification has been used in introductory programming courses, for example, to increase engagement with study materials, reduce procrastination, and increase attendance to practice sessions. Indeed, with the rapidly growing adoption of digital tools in such courses, the use of various game elements and mechanics to drive participation is increasing. Previous studies on gamification in computing have examined the effects over the whole student population. Prior work in other disciplines has found that the benefits associated with gamification may only be realized for some students, while others may even experience reduced motivation. The Hexad user types survey attempts to tackle this problem by grouping users into six different types for whom gamification should have different effects. The goal is to personalize the game elements for different user types, thus creating gamified experiences more suitable for individual learners. In this work, we study whether the Hexad survey could be used to guide the personalization of gamification in an introductory programming course. Specifically, we examine the quality of students' answers to the Hexad survey and explore whether they can be used to predict students' preferences for enabling gamification in the platform where they complete assignments. In our specific computing education context, we find that classifying students using the Hexad survey does not appear to be an effective approach for the automatic personalization of gamification.

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