Do Gaming Experience and Prior Knowledge Matter When Learning with a Gamified ITS?

Gamification has gained much popularity, due to its positive effects on learner engagement and motivation in online learning environments. However, there is still insufficient understanding of factors, including personal traits, which affect learning, as well as studies focusing on learning behaviors which can be targeted by gamification. This paper investigates the causal effects of gamification on student learning outcomes, and the role of the students’ background knowledge and prior gamification experience in the relationship. The context of our study is SQL-Tutor, an intelligent tutoring system. Although we found no evidence of improvement in learning outcomes of the gamified group, the low prior knowledge students who received badges had higher time-on-task, made more attempts on problems and received more hints during interaction with the system. We also found that students who had previous gamification experience spent more time on problem solving as compared to those who had no prior gamification experience.