Personalization of gamification-elements in an e-learning environment based on learners' motivation

Gamified systems benefit from various gamification-elements to motivate users and encourage them to persist in their quests towards a goal. This paper proposes a categorization of gamification-elements and learners' motivation type to enrich a learning management system with the advantages of personalization and gamification. This categorization uses the learners' motivation type to assign gamification-elements in learning environments. To find out the probable relations between gamification-elements and learners' motivation type, a field-research is done to measure learners' motivation along with their interests in gamification-elements. Based on the results of this survey, all the gamification-elements are categorized according to related motivation types, which form our proposed categorization. To investigate the effects of this personalization approach, a gamified learning management system is prepared. Our implemented system is evaluated in Technical English course at University of Tehran. Our experimental results on the average participation rate show the effectiveness of the personalization approach on the learners' motivation. Based on the paper findings, we suggest an integrated categorization of gamification-elements and learners' motivation type, which can further enhance the learners' motivation through personalization.