Does Gamification Work for Boys and Girls? An Exploratory Study with a Virtual Learning Environment Lais Z. Pedro University of São Paulo (USP) São Carlos – SP - Brazil laiszp@icmc.usp.br Aparecida M. Z. Lopes University of São Paulo (USP) Fatec Jahu – Jaú – SP – Brazil cidazem@icmc.usp.br Bruno G. Prates Federal Institute of São Paulo São Carlos – SP - Brazil brunogenovaprates@gmail.com Julita Vassileva University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon - SK- Canada jiv@cs.usask.ca Seiji Isotani University of São Paulo (USP) São Carlos – SP - Brazil sisotani@icmc.usp.br ABSTRACT The development and use of Virtual Learning Environments (VLE) has increased considerably over the past decades. Following that trend, many research findings have shown the benefits of using VLE during the learning process. Nevertheless, there are important problems that hinder their use requiring further investigation. Among them, one of the main problems is the inappropriate use of these systems by students. The boredom, lack of interest, monotony, lack of motivation, among other factors, ultimately causes students to behave inappropriately and lead them to a lower performance. In this context, the proposed study investigates whether it is possible to reduce undesirable behaviors and increase performance of students through the use of game mechanics (i.e. gamification). We develop a VLE, E-Game, that can turn on/off several game mechanics, such as points, badges, levels and so on. A case study was conducted with two groups of students to investigate their behavior during their interaction with E-Game with and without gamification. The results indicate that the gamification implemented by E-Game contributed to improve student performance in the case of boys. Yet, improvement was not observed in the case of girls. Furthermore, it was not possible to conclude whether the use of gamification helps to prevent inappropriate student behavior, and therefore, further studies and experiments are needed. Categories and Subject Descriptors • Interactive learning environments; Interactive games General Terms Experimentation, Human Factors Keywords e-learning, gamification, gender difference, gaming the system 1. INTRODUCTION The design, implementation and use of game mechanics in non- game contexts is known as “Gamification” [5]. It involves the use of aesthetics, mechanics and dynamics in contexts unrelated to games, to increase motivation and support behavior change. Currently, there is an increasing interest in using gamification in educational contexts due to the amount of applications and research in this area [12,16]. This growing interest can be explained mainly by the potential of gamification to influence, engage and motivate people [14]. Studies about the use of games and game mechanics in education have been conducted for decades [17]. Nevertheless, the interest in the topic has increased considerably in the past few years due to the potential of using game mechanics in virtual learning environments (VLE) to reduce students’ dropout rates and increase their motivation and participation in online learning activities [15]. Several researchers suggest that students who use VLE, particularly intelligent tutoring systems, often learn more and improve their performance and knowledge retention compared to students in conventional classrooms [1,11,14,20]. However, in some cases, factors such as lack of student motivation, boredom or dissatisfaction with a discipline directly affect the proper use of these systems [2]. A behavior called by Baker et al. [2] as “Gaming the System” manifests itself when students ignore the essence of the learning activities, and find ways to complete them mechanically without learning the content. Numerous efforts have been described to detect this type of behavior [3, 4, 6], to perform some sort of content adaptation that makes it difficult and even eliminate the continued use of inappropriate behavior [7]. However, no one so far has attempted to prevent this type of behavior by increasing students’ motivation and desire to learn as well as their commitment to their learning process. According to Cytowic [8] cognition, memory and decision making capacity of the individual are intrinsically linked to emotions. Studies show that students who feel anxious, upset or depressed do not assimilate information properly and because of that, eventually develop inappropriate behaviors that hinder learning [3, 13]. In contrast, students who feel motivated, challenged and intrigued tend to get better results. Yet, keeping Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. SAC’15, April 13-17, 2015, Salamanca, Spain. Copyright 2015 ACM 978-1-4503-3196-8/15/04…$15.00. http://dx.doi.org/ 10.1145/2695664.2695752