Gamification Works, Just Not The Way Most Courses Use It

Gamification Works In eLearning, Just Not The Way Most Courses Use It

Gamification has a reputation problem. Some people treat it as the answer to low engagement. Others see it as badges for grown-ups and a little embarrassing.

I've been building learning software since 2019, and I think both camps make the same mistake. They talk about gamification as one thing that either works or doesn't. The research says something more useful: it works, modestly, and some design choices matter much more than others.

What The Meta-Analysis Found

In 2019, Michael Sailer and Lisa Homner published a meta-analysis in Educational Psychology Review that pulled together experimental studies on gamified learning [1]. They looked at three kinds of outcomes separately.

• For cognitive outcomes, meaning what people actually learned, the effect size was g = .49, across 19 comparisons and 1,686 participants.
• For motivational outcomes, how much people wanted to engage, it was g = .36, across 16 comparisons and 2,246 participants.
• For behavioral outcomes, what people actually did, it was g = .25, across 9 comparisons and 951 participants.

The authors describe these as significant but small effects. And there's a second layer. The effect on learning held up when they looked only at the most rigorous studies. The effects on motivation and behavior were less stable.

So the honest summary is: gamification helps people learn a bit better. Whether it makes them more motivated, or changes what they do, depends a lot on how it's built.

The Two Moderators That Matter

The most practical part of the paper is the moderator analysis, where the authors checked which features changed the results.

Two stood out for behavioral outcomes.

Game fiction. Wrapping the learning in a narrative or a role, even a light one, made a difference. It doesn't have to be a full video game. A frame is enough: you're a new analyst on a team, you're preparing for a real negotiation, you're rebuilding a failing shop.

Social interaction. Gamification with other people in it worked better. And within that, combining competition with collaboration was particularly effective. Teams competing against each other, rather than individuals racing alone on a leaderboard.

Notice what isn't on that list: points by themselves, badges by themselves. The pieces most courses start with, because they're the easiest to switch on, are not the pieces the evidence points to.

Why Points And Badges Alone Disappoint

I think the reason is simple. A point means something only if it stands for something the learner cares about.

If a badge appears for opening a lesson, learners figure out quickly that it measures clicking. After that, it measures nothing. If points pile up for watching videos at 2x speed, you've gamified the wrong behavior and paid for it with your credibility.

There's also a ceiling on what any single mechanic can do. When Rene Kizilcec and colleagues tested light-touch motivational interventions across 250 online courses, the effects shrank dramatically at scale. His summary was blunt: "Behavioral interventions are not a silver bullet" [2]. Gamification is in the same family. It amplifies a good course. It doesn't rescue a confusing one.

How I Would Design It Instead

If I were adding gamification to a course tomorrow, this is the order I'd work in.

1. Reward the learning action, not the activity. Points for a submitted assignment, a correct answer on the second try, a practice task completed. Not for logging in. Ask of every reward: if someone gamed this, would they accidentally learn something? If the answer is no, drop it.

2. Make progress visible before you make it competitive. A progress bar, completed modules, the next milestone in sight. This is the quiet part of gamification and it suits almost every audience, including senior professionals who would roll their eyes at a leaderboard.

3. Add a thin layer of story. You don't need characters or artwork. A scenario that runs through the course, where each module moves the learner a step further in a realistic situation, is game fiction. It also happens to be good instructional design.

4. Put people on teams. If you use competition, let groups compete, and make the group's score depend on everyone contributing. That's the competition-plus-collaboration combination the meta-analysis flagged. In a cohort course it's easy. In a self-paced course, a shared challenge that runs for a week can do a similar job.

5. Keep the tone adult. Adults respond to advancement and small wins. They don't respond to confetti on every click. Restraint is part of the design.

If that feels like a lot, start with the second item. Visible progress is the cheapest mechanic to add and the hardest to get wrong, and it gives you a baseline. Add story and teams later, one at a time, so you can tell which change moved the numbers. Change five things at once and the next measurement becomes useless, because you won't know what to keep.

For a hands-on version of this, with examples of mechanics that suit adult learners and a few traps to avoid, here is a practical breakdown of gamification mechanics for adult learners.

How To Tell Whether It's Working

Remember which effect was the least stable in the meta-analysis: behavior. So don't judge your gamification by whether learners like it. Judge it by what they do.

Pick one behavior the mechanic is supposed to change. Submitting practice tasks, say, or coming back in the second week. Look at that number for the group before you added the mechanic and for the group after. Check it lesson by lesson, not as one course-wide average, so you can see where it helps and where it does nothing.

If the numbers don't move, the mechanic is decoration. Remove it. A course with two mechanics that work is better than a course with seven that learners have learned to ignore.

For L&D Teams

Corporate programs have one advantage here: real teams already exist. Cross-team challenges tied to practice tasks, with a scenario that mirrors actual work, cover all three things the research points to: learning actions, story, and collaborative competition. Individual leaderboards in a mandatory compliance course cover none of them.

The Short Version

Gamification works, a little, reliably. It works better when it rewards learning instead of clicking, when it has a story, and when people play together. Start there, measure what learners actually do, and treat every badge as a claim you have to be able to back up.

References

[1] Sailer, M., & Homner, L. (2020). The Gamification of Learning: a Meta-analysis. Educational Psychology Review, 32, 77–112. Published online August 15, 2019. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10648-019-09498-w

[2] Kizilcec, R. F., Reich, J., Yeomans, M., et al. (2020). Scaling Up Behavioral Science Interventions in Online Education. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Summary: Cornell Chronicle, June 15, 2020. https://news.cornell.edu/stories/2020/06/study-no-single-solution-helps-all-students-complete-moocs