Abstract—Many engineering students might encounter
difficulties understanding certain topics of related courses.
They feel frustrated when the teaching method is dull, and the
teaching materials are not attractive. All these may lead to the
demotivation of the students toward the courses. Fortunately,
there are tons of teaching techniques that are introduced to help
in boosting students' engagement in the classroom, such as
inquiry-based learning, project-based learning, service-based
learning, and others. These techniques require the student's
engagement, which eventually improves students' concentration
while motivating them to practice critical thinking skills. It may
promote positive learning experiences. However, engineering
courses comprised of various complicated theories, calculations,
projects, and assignments, which may burden some students.
Furthermore, in addition to the COVID 19 pandemic, the
students only attend their classes online, making the learning
process even more independent and challenging. Therefore, this
study aims to explore the gamification approach for engineering
students to increase their engagement while learning online. A
batch of 116 students from the Bachelor’s Degree of
Engineering in Electrical and Electronics offered by Universiti
Malaysia Sarawak (UNIMAS) are invited to participate in this
study. A gamified learning model that consists of four stages is
created in the online platform for the second-year KNR2443
Electrical Engineering Technology (EET) course. This gamified
learning model integrates students’ rank, interactive map, and
video guide. A survey related to gamification is collected from
the EET students who completed the gamified learning model.
The results are generally positive and indicate the gamification
approach can potentially improve the engineering students’
engagement and enjoyment in the learning process.
Index Terms—Engagement, gamification, online learning,
engineering.
The authors are with Universiti Malaysia Sarawak, Faculty of
Engineering, Electrical and Electronic Department, 94300 Kota Samarahan,
Malaysia (e-mail: lckho@unimas.my, ssngu@unimas.my,
jaanie@unimas.my, amdazra@unimas.my, ngliangy@unimas.my,
60899@siswa.unimas.my).
Cite: Lee Chin Kho, Sze Song Ngu, Annie Joseph, Dyg Azra Awang Mat, Liang Yew Ng, and Ji Liang Hau, "Gamification Approach towards Engineering Students' Engagement in Online Learning," International Journal of Information and Education Technology vol. 12, no. 6, pp. 485-491, 2022.
Copyright © 2022 by the authors. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited (CC BY 4.0).