Role of the Students’ Learning Styles on Motivation and Perception towards Gamified Learning Process

Abstract

The characteristic differences of participants affect their reactions to various gamification elements. Thus, it is critical to reveal the impact different type of students on gamified interventions, and the relation of personality features and gamified learning process. In this study, it is compered the motivation and perception of participants with different learning styles towards gamified learning process, and determined the correlation between motivation and perception. It is also figured out the enabler and barrier factors of students’ motivation and perception by learning styles in the 7-week gamified learning process. Participants consist of 95 prospective teachers with different learning styles. This study is based on the triangulation as a mixed reserch method. As data collection tools, the instructional materials motivation survey, course evaluation questionnaire, learning styles inventory of Felder and Soloman, and interview form are used. It is conducted the non-parametric tests, Mann-Whitney U and Spearman's rank correlation for quantitative data analysis, and the content analysis for in-detail qualitative data analysis. Results point out that there is not any significant differences between categories of each learning style dimension in terms of motivation and perception. Students have the high level motivation and perception by each category of four learning style dimensions. There are positive and medium correlations between motivation and perception of students by learning styles. It is also determined the various enabler and barrier factors of students’ motivation and perception in gamified learning process. Frequencies and percentages of enablers are the higher than barriers considering students’ learning styles. These results prove that the gamified activities-tasks considering the learning styles have a power to motivate students with different characteristics to the learning process and provide the positive perception towards the gamified process. It is also discussed the quantitative and qualitative directions for the further researches.

Keywords

• Gamified learning process
• learning styles
• motivation
• perception

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