Received June 14, 2019, accepted June 28, 2019, date of publication July 3, 2019, date of current version

July 23, 2019.

Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/ACCESS.2019.2926622

Gamified Collaborative Environment in Moodle

HASAN FAHMI HASAN , MUESSER NAT, AND VANYE ZIRA VANDUHE
Management Information Systems Department, School of Applied Sciences, Cyprus International University, 99010 Nicosia, Cyprus
Corresponding author: Hasan Fahmi Hasan (20141234@student.ciu.edu.tr)

ABSTRACT Higher education institutions are struggling to enhance teaching and learning processes to
support students’ needs in this information age. In the last few years, gamification has been widely used
to improve learning experiences in various environments. Education is one of the fields that adopted
gamification as technological innovation to increase student engagement since it plays a critical role in
higher education, especially in digital learning environments. Today, learning management systems (LMSs)
are commonly used to facilitate learning processes. However, the engagement and the motivation of students
when using such systems require extra attention. There is a need for an instructor to incorporate digital
technologies with esteemed innovations to create an engaging learning environment. Increasing students’
engagement is said to be evidence of increased learning. Therefore, this paper addresses these challenges
by designing, developing, and evaluating a gamified collaborative discussion environment on the moodle
LMS. To achieve this, the students in a postgraduate course used a gamified online discussion environment
for eight weeks during group work to complete their term projects. Students’ online learning pre-test and
post-test data are utilized to investigate students’ engagement in a gamified discussion environment. The
results illustrate that there is a significant difference between pre-test and post-test results, which shows that
the gamified online discussion environment has improved students’ engagement. Furthermore, students that
highly accessed the online course activities had a good engagement, which motivated students to conduct
online collaboration according to the game-feature context.

INDEX TERMS Gamification, collaborative environment, online discussion environment, moodle.

I. INTRODUCTION blended learning strategies and practices explore the dif-

Information and communication technologies (ICTs) are
effectively used in higher education. However, there is a
need to continuously evaluate and monitor their contribu-
tions to the teaching and learning processes. Over the last
decades, the standards of higher education have confirmed
the potential value of a student-centered learning approach
in which students are all highly engaged and improve their
learning processes [1], [2]. Web 2.0 and internet technologies
have caused higher educational institutions to use different
learning approaches such as blended learning or flipped class-
rooms.
The use of digital technologies promotes collaborative
learning in blended learning environments. In general,
a blended learning approach that combines the traditional
classroom approach and digital learning approach is con-
sidered as the significant trend in today’s higher education.
Various studies that are focused on the difference between
The associate editor coordinating the review of this manuscript and
approving it for publication was Saqib Saeed.
ferences of the blended learning practice mode [3]. In a
blended learning approach, various tools and resources are
used, including recorded lecture videos, online assessments,
e-Portfolios, online tutorials, wikis, and online discussions to
improve students’ interaction [4].
The Moodle LMS has been designed to enable instructors
to develop online courses that foster students’ participation in
an interactive and collaborative environment. The main aim
of Moodle is to help the instructors to provide better opportu-
nities to present the knowledge and for support in acquiring
knowledge, skills, and experiences. Moodle plays a crucial
role in providing flexibility to support students’ requirements,
engagement, and motivations [5], [6]. The improvement of
students’ engagement in higher education is perceived as a
perennial problem since the format of the classroom teaching
environment is not recognized as an interactive environment
that promotes active participation and engagement. Mean-
while, providing access, delivering information, and illustrat-
ing the key concepts in higher education can improve the
interaction and communication between the instructors and

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VOLUME 7, 2019 89833

the learners. The enhancement of student engagement plays
a critical role in creating better learning strategies [7].
Online discussions have developed and been used in dif-
ferent learning contexts [8]. The main benefits of online
discussions include the promotion of a sense of community
through the learners, sharing knowledge, the development
of higher-level thinking and improving active participation
and student engagement. When the learners actively share
ideas, contribute, and discuss with their peers, this means
that they learned the required information and constructed
their knowledge resources. Furthermore, the instructors tend
to develop the gamified approach to support student collabo-
ration, participation, and sharing their experiences with their
peers.
Currently, gamification has been established as a new
approach in education in general, teaching, and learning more
specific knowledge [9], [10]. The central concept behind
gamification is to integrate game elements in a nongame envi-
ronment. Furthermore, increasing the potential to improve
student engagement and motivation encourages researchers
to develop and adopt gamification in educational contexts
with various approaches [11]. Gamification tends to improve
student engagement in virtual learning environments by using
several game elements such as badges, points, levels, and
leaderboards [12]–[14].
Due to the lack of student engagement, the main aim of this
study to determine the impact of gamifying a familiar online
discussion environment on student engagement through the
Moodle platform. In particular, we demonstrate the imple-
mentation of a gamified Moodle and how to increase engage-
ment in online discussion environments in higher education.
II. STUDENT ENGAGEMENT IN ONLINE DISCUSSION
ENVIRONMENTS
Digital technologies have reshaped face-to-face interactions
and replaced them with online technologies.
Student engagement is an essential component of
digital learning, which has a high impact on academic per-
formance [15]. Course materials, instructional tasks, infor-
mation overload, the interface characteristics of classroom
management, and student roles are the main factors that affect
student engagement in online learning environments [16].
Various strategies for student engagement in the class-
room environment have been considered. Student engage-
ment can be classified into three different categories:
(1) behavioral engagement (BE), (2) emotional engagement
(EE), and (3) cognitive engagement (CE) [17]. Behavioral
engagement represents students’ participation and engage-
ment in classroom resources/activities. Meanwhile, emo-
tional engagement illustrates students’ positive and effective
responses to assignments, instructors’ questions, and aca-
demic activities. Cognitive engagement shows how students
solve the problems and think creatively in their academic
activities. The three accepted component models of student
engagement include behavioral, cognitive, and emotional
engagement [18]. Behavioral engagement is about students’
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H. F. Hasan et al.: Gamified Collaborative Environment in Moodle
participation in learning activities, homework completion,
and following classroom rules [19], while behavioral engage-
ment is defined as student effort, participation, persistence,
attention, and positive attitudes in learning activities [20].
Online discussion environments play critical roles in
improving student interaction and collaboration in an edu-
cational context [21]. They provide an opportunity for stu-
dents who have not contributed to the classroom environment
or are shy to participate and engage through posting ques-
tions or answers when they feel more comfortable. Online
discussion environments also enhance collaborative learning
by allowing the sharing of experiences and knowledge and
facilitating participation and communication [22]. Online dis-
cussion environments include many indicators that measure
a student’s behavioral engagement, such as the number of
posts, the duration that is spent on creating and reading dis-
cussions, and the number of logins to the discussion environ-
ments. [23], [24]. There is a significant relationship between
learning and discussion posts [25]. According to the rela-
tionship between learning and discussion, posts occur when
discussions are wanted. Their results show that whenever
a discussion post is voluntary, four discussion posts were
developed and created by thirty-two undergraduate students
throughout the whole semester [26].
III. GAMIFICATION IN MOODLE
The recent developments in internet and communication tech-
nologies offer new opportunities for various sectors in gen-
eral [27] and especially for the education sector worldwide.
Accordingly, many higher education institutions are continu-
ously adopting digital learning mechanisms [28].
The emergence of gamification started in the early 2000
[29]. Gamification is defined as using game-design elements
and rules in the form of nongame formats, which is consid-
ered as a new context. The main aim of gamification is to
promote students’ performance and motivations related to a
given activity. Gamification in the educational context is pre-
sented to the students in a new and immersive experience that
is based on motivation while changing traditional learning
into interactive learning [54].
Gamification concentrates on using game-design elements
and game thinking to enhance student engagement and moti-
vation [30]. Using leaderboards, levels, progress bars, badges,
time, and completion restrictions on activities are consid-
ered as critical components of game elements and mechan-
ics [31], [32], [52]. However, any application that integrates
game mechanics and game elements with proper instructions
can be known as a gamification environment [33].
Most of the existing experimental studies have shown
that the gamification has a significant influence on students’
engagement [12], [34], motivation [10], and learning out-
comes [35]. However, some researchers reported negative
results related to gamification, such as less satisfaction, moti-
vation, and empowerment [11].
The Moodle LMS is one of the most popular LMSs today,
and it is widely used to improve students’ collaboration
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H. F. Hasan et al.: Gamified Collaborative Environment in Moodle
TABLE 1. Game mechanics features in a gamified environment.
in online learning environments [50]. The advantages of
using Moodle LMS include sharing information with the
students, facilitating access to course materials, announc-
ing and collecting course assignments, enhancing students’
engagement through online discussions and providing dis-
tance learning classes [36], [37]. Furthermore, Moodle’s
flexibility and user-friendly interface provide the ability to
develop a gamified learning environment. The Moodle plat-
form supports the integration of game elements such as time
restrictions, badges, leaderboards, chatrooms and discussion
forums, activity completion indicators, progress bars, score-
boards, plugins, restricted access and points [36], [43], [53].
Empirical research studies have proven that the use of gami-
fication in Moodle tends to improve students’ motivation and
engagement [38].
Customizing the Moodle platform can offer certain fea-
tures. The Moodle block can be used to add engagement fea-
tures, such as instance progress bars, level ups, stashes, chats,
GISMO and badge blocks [39], while the Moodle resources
and activities can be used to add lessons, H5Ps, quizzes,
Login access data, labels, and questionnaires [40], [31].
Game mechanics have positive influences on supporting stu-
dents to achieve better academic outcomes [13]. In general,
game mechanics provide a structured set of objectives for
performing tasks and gaining rewards to complete their activ-
ities, as shown in table 1.
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FIGURE 1. Showing the lessons in the gamified moodle.
IV. DESIGN AND IMPLEMENTATION OF GAMIFIED
MOODLE ENVIRONMENT
The gamified online discussion environment that was devel-
oped for this study consists of the discussion board, which
includes posting, reading, updating and commenting; and
the features that were developed based on the gamification
features, such as experience points, badges, progress bars,
leaderboards, and awards, which are used to measured its
impact on students’ engagement.
A. THE MAIN SITE PAGE
There are many features that are configured on the main
page, such as the navigation board, which consists of the
dashboard, site page, calendar and all necessary navigation
boards that are concerned with the blocks, resources, and
activities that encompass the users’ gaming experience in a
gamified platform.
B. DEVELOPING GAMIFIED LESSONS ON MOODLE
The main course page is developed and it applies various
resources and activities. Each resource and activity has their
own respective configurations. According to the gamified
online discussion environment, the model consists of (7)
topics, as shown in the figure below.
In the above figure, the topics have assigned to (7) dif-
ferent activities, including the term project specifications,
term project group, engagement environment, presentation
submission 1, engagement environment, presentation sub-
mission 2 and submit final project. Each topic has its
own vital features and restrictions based on the gamified
environment.
C. COMPLETION PROGRESS
Completion Progress is a Moodle block and time-
management tool that follows the contents of academic
activities. Furthermore, it shows the applied course activi-
ties and visualizes the practiced activities and resources of
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FIGURE 2. Completion progress block.
FIGURE 3. Completion progress overview.
participants. By placing the mouse pointer on the bar,
the activity status will be shown. As usual, the completion
progress takes place on the top right-hand side of the main
course page, as shown in the figure below.
The completed progress is represented in different colors
to denote if the activity has been completed or not. The
figure below is a screenshot from the recent study illustrating
which activities have been completed. The green color rep-
resents the completion of the participant’s course activities,
while the blue color indicates that the participants did not
finish the course activity.
D. LEVEL UP
Level up is a Moodle block and is considered as an essential
tool to gamify the course activities by providing the partici-
pants with Experience Points (XPs), which represent the par-
ticipant’s progress. Furthermore, it shows the new progress
levels of participants and what they have remaining to pass
to the next level. The primary purpose of using the Level
up block is to incentivize participants to follow their learn-
ing experience and motivate them to complete their course
activities.
The Level up plays a critical role in the gamified environ-
ment because it includes five essential game elements such
as Experience Points, Leaderboards, Levels, Progress, and
Badges. The figure below illustrates the leaderboard contents.
The level tabs demonstrate the number of levels that have
been passed by the participants. The participant tab shows the
all the users that have participated in the gamified Moodle.
Moreover, the total numbers of XPs below represent the par-
ticipants’ points that they earned from their course activities
while the progress bar illustrates the required points to pass
to the next level.
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H. F. Hasan et al.: Gamified Collaborative Environment in Moodle
FIGURE 4. Level up block.
FIGURE 5. Leaderboard of 6 participants in level up.
E. GISMO ANALYTICS
GISMO is a graphical performance monitoring tool that
provides the ability to visualize a student’s performance
on academic activities in the online environment. Further-
more, by using GISMO, the instructor is able to follow
and check the various aspects of a student’s performance
such as the student accessing course activities, submitting
assignments, applying and completing discussion forms, and
reading course contents. The significance of using GISMO
is that it provides an overall graphical overview of online
courses and not just that of a particular student or specific
activity. In the present study, GISMO is used to examine
the participants’ log-ins, access overviews, assignments, and
forum access and show the completion of assignments, dis-
cussions, and resources by the students.
Currently, gamification plays a significant role in improv-
ing students’ engagement in blended learning environments.
Gamification is supported with LMSs, which provide the
instructor both online learning and traditional face-to-face
instruction. This research strives to adopt a gamified online
discussion form to improve students’ behavioral engagement
in blended learning environments.
F. GAME MECHANICS
Game mechanics are defined as techniques that specify the
rules and strategies, which are designed to improve their
interaction, motivation, and engagement [41]. In this study,
game mechanics refer to the mechanisms that create game
elements using Moodle’s settings and features. Furthermore,
the main game mechanics are the completion tracking of
course activities, creating a post, updating, and reading and
specifying points for the completion of activities [31]. The
key concept behind game mechanics is to use game elements
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H. F. Hasan et al.: Gamified Collaborative Environment in Moodle
FIGURE 6. Level 2 in the gamified moodle environment.
such as progress bars, level ups, leaderboards, and badges to
improve the learning experiences of students [42].
In our study, the gamified online discussion environment
was applied for 8 weeks during the spring semester of the
2017-2018 school year. First, pre-test questionnaires were
given to examine students’ engagement before applying to
the gamified collaborative environment. The study used a
specific game mechanics strategy with game elements to
adopt the gamified online discussion environment. In gen-
eral, the gamified environment consists of (9) levels such as
the pre-test questionnaire, term project specifications, term
project group, engagement environment, presentation sub-
mission 1, engagement environment, presentation submis-
sion 2, submit final project and post-test questionnaire, and
each level has specific mechanics and rules.
The completion tracking is configured for the online gam-
ified course to track students’ activities. The students should
first apply for the term project specifications, which consist
of (7) sublevels, as shown in the figure below.
When the students are watching the instructional video that
was designed and created using the H5P interactive Moodle
plugin, the student cannot apply for the Suggested Research
Area unless the instructional video is marked as a completed
activity. The student will not be able to access the Harvard
referencing guideline file until the suggested research area
is completed. Therefore, the restriction related to completion
is a feature of the game mechanics that motivate students to
follow and complete all the required course activities.
Afterwards, all the activities of the term project specifi-
cations are marked as completed and the points (XPs) that
are required to pass to the next level are earned. The Level
up Moodle plugin provides impressive game mechanics that
allow for collect the required experience points to move to the
next level, as shown in the figure below. A student can earn
XPs when another activity is completed.
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FIGURE 7. Level up experience points.
In this study, as shown in the figure, level one starts at 0 XP.
A student at level one needs to collect 50 XP to pass to level
two, a student at level two needs to collect 100 XP to get to
level three, and a student at level three needs to collect 150 XP
to pass to level four. A student at level four needs to gain
300 XP to pass to level five, a student at level five needs to get
400 XP to pass to level six, and a student at level six needs to
collect 550 XP to pass to level seven. A student at level seven
needs to collect 650 XP to pass to level eight and a student at
level eight needs to collect 750 XP to pass to the last level.
After the student has accessed the term project specifica-
tions, he or she earns a required point. Then, the student is
able to pass to another level, which is the term project group.
In this level, students should select their group and mark this
task as completed to gain access to the engagement environ-
ment level. The groups are distributed into two groups, which
are Ph.D. and MSc. Each group for the Ph.D. should have
one student per group, while for the MSc, three students can
belong to 1 group with one student specified as the group
leader.
In the engagement environment, the student should create
two posts, update two posts, and read the posts to be engaged
in the environment. After completing the activity and gaining
enough points, participants are expected to submit presenta-
tion submission 1 online and move to the next activity level.
The completion progress is used to monitor the students’
activities. The completion progress is a feature of the game
mechanics that provides the ability to show which activities
have been completed and which activities have not yet been
completed. In general, this mechanics helps to motivate the
student and complete their activity while following their
peer’s completion progress.
After completing the engagement environment and presen-
tation submission 1, the student should apply for engage-
ment environment 2; post, update and read their own and
peers’ discussion posts; and collect the required points. After
this, students will be able to access and submit their second
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FIGURE 8. Part 1 of the gamified online discussion environment.
FIGURE 9. Part 2 of the gamified online discussion environment.
presentation through presentation submission 2. Afterwards,
Submit final project will be active, and students can access
the module to submit their final projects.
Aside from that, the student should access the post-test
questionnaire that was added to the Moodle. Two question-
naires were developed to examine students’ engagement and
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H. F. Hasan et al.: Gamified Collaborative Environment in Moodle
performance before and after applying to the gamified online
environment. Meanwhile, all the logs of data of the students
are stored in the Moodle system.
V. RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
In this study, an exploratory method design was utilized based
on the online discussion environment. The pre-test and post-
test questionnaires were used to investigate the students’
engagement in an online environment. Twenty (20) different
questions have been prepared that were taken from AUSSE,
2011, [44] and [45] and are measured on a 5 point Likert scale.
The questions were then added to the online course page.
Furthermore, the questionnaire was used to evaluate the
changes in online student engagement throughout the aca-
demic semester. Students were provided with a pre-test ques-
tionnaire about their engagement before using the online
environment. Students were provided with the post-test ques-
tionnaire that measured their engagement after using the
online environment. The t-test is used to compare the pre- and
post-test results to assess if the gamified online discussion
environment impacted student engagement.
VI. DATA COLLECTION
Forty-one (41) students (7 females and 34 males) out of (45)
students participated in the recent study. The participants
were took a graduate level (MSC and Ph.D.) Management
Information System (MIS) course at a University in the north-
ern part of Cyprus, which is a large private university in north
Cyprus - Turkey. The course instructor and the researcher
conducted and followed the study.
The gamified online discussion environment was applied
for (8) weeks during the spring semester of the 2017-
2018 academic year. First, the participants should answer the
pre-test questionnaire so that we can examine student engage-
ment before applying the gamified online environment.
Furthermore, the students should complete the term project
specification. Then, they can select their group member(s)
for their term project, and the groups are split into two types,
which are Ph.D. and MSc. In the Ph.D. groups, each group
should have one student per group, while for the MSc groups,
three students can be in 1 group with one of them specified
as the group leader. In a gamified online discussion envi-
ronment, one engagement environment has been developed,
which is used for creating a group topic, posting, reading,
updating, replaying, and discussing your group topic. After
the students created their topics and discuss this topic with
their peers, the students should create and upload their first
presentation progress report. Then, they should apply for the
second online engagement environment for more discussions,
updates and posts on their topic and those of their peers.
In general, each day, the student should make at least two
posts in the engagement environment. After completing all
mentioned progress, one module was created for students to
upload their final project on the online environment.
First, the pre-test and post-test questionnaires are designed
to assess the learning management system – Moodle.
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H. F. Hasan et al.: Gamified Collaborative Environment in Moodle

The students’ replies to the questionnaires were collected and

exported to be used as indicators to measure and visualize the
online student engagement in the gamified online discussion
environment. Second, the GISMO block plugin (Statistical
Analytics) was used to address students’ engagement.
With the GISMO tool, instructors have ability to inspect
the different features of distance students such as students’
attendance and the (log data) numbers of times accessing
the course activities, creating, posting, updating, reading,
discussing and submitting course assignments and activities.
The data are then exported from the learning management
system - Moodle - through the online environment.

VII. DATA ANALYSIS AND RESULTS

In this study, the IBM SPSS software is used to
analyze the pre-test and post-test questionnaire data.
Furthermore, descriptive statistics are used to analyze the fre-
quencies and determine the means of the pre-test and post-test
questionnaires. Analyze -> Compare Means (paired sample
t-test) is utilized to assess the significant differences between
the pre-test and post-test questionnaires. GISMO’s statistical FIGURE 10. Students access overview (log-ins).
analytics plugin is used to extract and explore students’
online behaviors, with providing graphical representations of
student interactions.

A. ANALYTICS RESULT
Figure 10 shows the participants’ (log data) Moodle access
data. In total, 45 students used the online environment
through the 8 weeks from the 1st of April 2018 – the 26th
of May 2018. The red dots represent the number of times
participants accessed the system in the represented week. The
total numbers that are shown below represent how many times
the students logged in gamified discussion environment.
Figure 11 demonstrates the discussion environment’s
access trends. The letters from ‘A’ to ‘H’ describes the activi-
ties of the log-ins based on the responses to the activity. In the
beginning, the project was announced and the instructions
and login details were provided to students during lecture
hours. At point ‘A,’ there are 27 log-ins in the first week and
this illustrates that between the first and the second week,
students try to understand the system and answer the pre-test
questionnaire. At point ‘B’, which is week 2, with 65 log-
ins, the participants accessed the term project specifications
to understand the requirements. Meanwhile, constituting their
project group results in a decline in the logs at point ‘C’ with
44 log-ins. During the third week, students needed to meet
with the lecturer to approve the group members. In the fourth
week, there was an increase in log-ins to 69 at point ‘D’, since
students needed to choose a topic, share, and make decisions
with their peers in the online engagement environment. After
a short discussion and determination of the topic, there was
no increase or decline in the log-ins in week five at point ’E.’
This shows that students engaged online to discuss with other
participants from other groups and to discuss with their group
members to prepare for the first presentation. At weeks 4 and
5, the logs were at an equilibrium. This is the result of students
FIGURE 11. Student access per week.
meeting together offline and/or online to simultaneously to
prepare their presentation. After completing the first presen-
tation and in preparation of the second presentation at point
‘F’ in week 6, there was an increase in log-ins from 69 to
72 while participants engaged online to share and discuss
their second presentations. Week 7 at point G is when students
met offline to prepare their final submissions. There was an
increase in accessing the referential guidelines and there was
a deadline for the project’s submission, and the log-ins were
recorded as high, as stated in week eight at point ‘H.’ Just
logging into activities does not determine that participants
were engaged, but logging into the resources that are available
within the online engagement environment could provide
reasons to determine that participants were engaged with
the online resources. The section below explains the access
to the resources that were used to determine the students’
engagement.
Figure 12 shows the total numbers of student accesses to
resources in the 8 weeks. The students should have reviewed
the content of the resources and understand them well
enough before becoming involved in the online engagement

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FIGURE 12. Student access to the resources.
environment. As illustrated below, the fewest number of
resources that were accessed by the students is only one
access per resource, while the highest number of accesses by
the students is seven times per resource.
The total number of students who accessed the resources
has shown that the students effectively interact with the
resources. The project specification video is the most
accessed resource since the students want to understand the
project specifications well to meet the requirements. The sec-
ond most accessed resource is the Harvard referencing guide-
line file since the students need to understand and carefully
follow the required referencing style. The third most accessed
resource is the suggested research area because students are
striving to select an interesting topic for their project. The
students access the MIS quarterly journal and the lists of
ACM conferences and information and management journal
resources because they might be uninteresting and not widely
used by the students. The basics of paper writing and publish-
ing URLs are the least accessed resource because students’
priority is not to publish a paper but to complete the project
on time.
Figure 13 shows that 45 participants submitted the first pre-
sentation, the second presentation, and a final project. Here,
a submitted assignment is presented as an empty red box on
the bar. In general, according to the assignment submission
overview, the students are highly engaged in the gamified
online discussion environment because the majority of the
participants completed and submitted their projects.
Figure 14 demonstrates the participants’ access to the
engagement environment in a gamified online discussion
environment. The numbers below a preset number of
times show that students are participating in engagement
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H. F. Hasan et al.: Gamified Collaborative Environment in Moodle
FIGURE 13. Assignment submission overview.
FIGURE 14. Contributions to forums overview.
activities such as writing, updating, posting, and discussing
with their peers in the gamified environment. The contribu-
tion to forums overview is illustrated in two different colors,
red and gray. Red represents the participants who are writing,
updating, and posting in the engagement environment. In this
study, the maximum number of posts and updates is 26, while
the minimum number of posts and updates is 3.
Gray illustrates the participants who are reading and fol-
lowing their own and peers’ posts (topic). The maximum
number of read posts by the participants is 182, while the
minimum number of read posts is 17. The researcher was
monitoring the engagement environment and all topics that
were discussed that were related to the course and project
content. As a result, the number of posts and reads of partici-
pants reflected that the online student engagement improved
and there was increased student interaction with their peers.
Figure 15 shows the students who have engaged with the
gamified online environment, their levels, the total experience
points that they earned, and their learning activity progress.
In the gamified environment, the leaderboard has a powerful
impact on student interaction and supports the recognition
of the students with top academic achievements [46]. In this
study, the result has shown that students highly participate
in the gamified online discussion environment because they
were motivated to gain experience points to pass to the next
level. Furthermore, competition is promoted with using a
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H. F. Hasan et al.: Gamified Collaborative Environment in Moodle
FIGURE 15. Leaderboard overview.
leaderboard because it supports the potential enhancement of
students’ engagement levels.
Figure 15 illustrates that the students are highly moti-
vated and contributed to the gamified online environment.
According to the level up ladder, 38 students were placed
in level 9 because they collected and earned all relevant XPs
from the resources, assignments, and discussion environment.
The implementation of gamification in an online environ-
ment aimed to improve students’ participation using the XPs,
which encouraged the students to collect more points and be
labeled as top achievers.
B. T-TEST
Based on the compared mean statistics, we applied the paired
sample t-test to the post-test and pre-test questionnaires to
illustrate the significant differences between the post-test and
pre-test questionnaires. In the table below, the t-test results
show that there is an impressive improvement in the students’
engagement since the mean is 4.5146 for the post-test, which
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TABLE 2. Paired samples statistics.
TABLE 3. Paired samples test.
is higher than the mean (3.8390) for the pre-test. Additionally,
the standard deviation for the post-test is 0.21250, while that
for the pre-test is 0.54858.
According to the paired sample test, as shown in table 5.2,
there are significant differences between the pre-test and post-
test since t(40) = 7.997 and p= 0.000 < 0.05.
However, using the t-test, the significance value is
0.149 for the post-test and it is 0.000 for the pre-test.
This shows that there is a significant difference between
the post-test and the pre-test because 0.149 is more signif-
icant than 0.000. There is a 95% difference between the
0.84636 and 0.50486.
We used the descriptive statistics to calculate the skewness
and kurtosis for the 20 questions of the pre-test and post-test
questionnaires. The skewness and kurtosis should be between
−2.3 and +2.3 to ensure the normality of the data [47]. Fur-
thermore, the acceptable range for the skewness and kurtosis
is between −2 and +2 to be able to determine the normal
distribution of the data [48]. The results show that the data
are normally distributed because the skewness and kurtosis
for both are in the acceptable ranges.
VIII. FINDINGS AND DISCUSSIONS
This study examined and explored the impacts of a gamified
discussion environment on student engagement in Moodle.
According to the results, the use of gamification in the online
discussion environment has a positive impact on student
engagement.
89841

Students in traditional online discussion environments are
less engaged and less frequently access the course con-
tents [8]. In this study, students’ activity and content access
data show that students highly access the course activities and
the results suggest a positive influence on student engage-
ment. Based on results that are indicated in Figure 12, the total
number of accesses for each student shows that they had good
engagement by accessing the online resources in the gamified
discussion environment. Gamification has improved student
interaction with the resources, which is proven using the
minimum and the maximum numbers of resources that are
accessed by students.
The results have exposed that the majority of the students
participated and submitted their assignments in the gamified
online discussion environment, and only a few students had
low engagement in the discussion environment. Students’
submission overview shows that classmates’ submissions
influenced their engagement and encouraged them to com-
plete their assignments. The use of the gamification envi-
ronment influences students’ engagement and supports their
learning processes [51].
Leveling up, leaderboards and progress bars play critical
roles in improving student engagement in a gamified discus-
sion environment, which provides a structured set of objec-
tives for performing tasks and gaining rewards to complete
their activities and increase student engagement [11], [52].
As illustrated in Figure 14, the high numbers of posts,
updates, and reads prove that students are positively engaged.
Concerning behavioral engagement, the access of the course
site by the student is done to keep following their task
achievements, check their received responses, make more
posts and reread peers’ discussions to gain more points and
pass to the next level [14].
IX. CONCLUSIONS, LIMITATIONS AND FUTURE WORK
Adopting gamification in an online environment improves
students’ reactions and enjoyment [49]. In this study, students
reported that the gamified online discussion environment
was enjoyable and exciting compared to traditional online
discussion environments.
Using game mechanics and game elements in a gami-
fied online discussion environment has a high impact on
students’ achievements since participants are interested in
logging into the course, monitoring their responses, post-
ing, rereading and discussing with their peers to improve
their levels on the leaderboard. The leaderboard can improve
students’ engagement rates in the gamified online environ-
ment that is used in the study [11]. The game feature con-
text has improved students’ engagement by accessing online
resources and motivating students to engage online [51].
In this research, the number of participants was fairly small
and the environment was only applied in one module for
one semester of one academic year. In the future, it can be
applied in other modules. Furthermore, this research only
concentrates on behavioral engagement using some gaming
elements.
89842
H. F. Hasan et al.: Gamified Collaborative Environment in Moodle
The future conceptual framework can determine which
game element has the most impact on students’ engagement
to improve their learning achievements.
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HASAN FAHMI HASAN was born in Baghdad,
Iraq. He received the B.Sc. degree in software
engineering from the College of Engineering,
Salahaddin University, Erbil, in 2009, the M.Sc.
degree in engineering management from the Col-
lege of Engineering, Cyprus International Univer-
sity, Cyprus, in 2014, and the Ph.D. degree in
management information system from the School
of Applied Sciences, Cyprus International Univer-
sity, in 2019. He finished the primary school in
Baghdad, and the secondary and intermediate school in Erbil, Kurdistan,
Iraq. He was a Lecturer with the Department of Computer Science, College
of Science, Cihan University, Erbil, where he was the Director of Research
Center. He is a member of the Student Engagement Research Group (SERG).
He has authored over seven articles and books. His research interests include
educational technology, gamification in education, and management infor-
mation systems.
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 H. F. Hasan et al.: Gamified Collaborative Environment in Moodle

MUESSER NAT received the Ph.D. degree in com-
puter science from the University of Greenwich,
U.K. She is currently an Associate Professor with
Cyprus International University, Nicosia, Cyprus.
She is also the Head of the MIS Department and an
e-learning Coordinator with Cyprus International
University. Her areas of research include digi-
tal learning, educational technology, social media,
and management information systems. She has a
number of journal and conference publications.
environment using game elements, game principles and theories, and game
mechanics.
VANYE ZIRA VANDUHE is currently a Research
Assistant with the School of Applied Sciences,
Cyprus International University, where he is cur-
rently pursuing the Ph.D. degree in management
information systems. He is currently involved in
researching on gamification for instructor train-
ing with blended learning environment in higher
education. He aims at learning management plat-
forms that could be gamified for instructor train-
ing. These include designing gamification training

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