Resumen de Gamification suffers from the novelty effect but benefits from the familiarization effect: Findings from a longitudinal study
Rubens Luiz Rodrigues, Filipe D. Pereira, Armando Toda, Paula T. Palomino, Marcela Pessoa, Leandro Silva Galvão Carvalho, David Fernandes, Elaine H. T. Oliveira, Alexandra I. Cristea, Seiji Isotani
There are many claims that gamifcation (i.e., using game elements outside games) impact decreases over time (i.e., the novelty efect). Most studies analyzing this efect focused on extrinsic game elements, while fctional and collaborative competition have been recently recommended. Additionally, to the best of our knowledge, no long-term research has been carried out with STEM learners from introductory programming courses (CS1), a context that demands encouraging practice and mitigating motivation throughout the semester. Therefore, the main goal of this work is to better understand how the impact of a gamifcation design, featuring fctional and competitive-collaborative elements, changes over a 14-week period of time, when applied to CS1 courses taken by STEM students (N = 756). In an ecological setting, we followed a 2x7 quasi-experimental design, where Brazilian STEM students completed assignments in either a gamifed or non-gamifed version of the same system, which provided the measures (number of attempts, usage time, and system access) to assess user behavior at seven points in time. Results indicate changes in gamifcation’s impact that appear to follow a U-shaped pattern. Supporting the novelty efect, the gamifcation’s efect started to decrease after four weeks, decrease that lasted between two to six weeks.
Interestingly, the gamifcation’s impact shifted to an uptrend between six and 10 weeks after the start of the intervention, partially recovering its contribution naturally.
Thus, we found empirical evidence supporting that gamifcation likely sufers from the novelty efect, but also benefts from the familiarization efect, which contributes to an overall positive impact on students. These fndings may provide some guidelines to inform practitioners about how long the initial contributions of gamifcation last, and how long they take to recover after some reduction in benefts. It can also help researchers to realize when to apply/evaluate interventions that use gamifcation by taking into consideration the novelty efect and, thereby, better understand the real impact of gamifcation on students’ behavior in the long run.
