GAMEDUCATION: Using Gamification Techniques to Engage Learners in Online Learning

Engaging learners long enough to see them through to the end of a course has become one of the most significant problems faced by e-learning developers. The lack of engagement in e-learning can be attributed to three main issues: interaction, challenge and context. Therefore, learning types with high level of interaction and challenge - such as game-based learning – have become widely used. In order to gain the power of games - represented by interaction, motivation, and challenge - e-learning developers started thinking of using game mechanics and dynamics to enhance e-Learning. Gamification of education is still a new trend of research and lacks frameworks and guidelines of how to develop ‘gamified’ learning tools enabling new forms of engaging learning. This paper reviews theories and research related to learner motivation and engagement. Moreover, it proposes using Gamification in the context of education thus to tackle the lack of learner’s engagement.