Brain points: a growth mindset incentive structure boosts persistence in an educational game

There is great interest in leveraging video games to improve student engagement and motivation. However, educational games are not uniformly effective, and little is known about how in-game rewards affect children's learning-related behavior. In this work, we argue that educational games can be improved by fundamentally changing their incentive structures to promote the growth mindset, or the belief that intelligence is malleable. We present "brain points," a system that encourages the development of growth mindset behaviors by directly incentivizing effort, use of strategy, and incremental progress. Through a study of 15,000 children, we show that the "brain points" system encourages more low-performing students to persist in the educational game Refraction when compared to a control, and increases overall time played, strategy use, and perseverance after challenge. We believe that this growth mindset incentive structure has great potential in many educational environments.

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