Increasing Students Engagement in Data Structure Course Using Gamification Reem S. Al-Towirgi 1, 2 , Lamya F. Daghestani 1 , Lamiaa F. Ibrahim 1, 3* 1 Department of Computer Science, Faculty of Computing and Information Technology, King Abdulaziz University Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. 2 Department of Computer Science, Faculty of Computing and Information Technology, Taif University, Taif, Saudi Arabia. 3 Computer Science Department, Institute of Statistical Studies and Research, Cairo University. * Corresponding author. Tel.: +966557279106; email: lfibrahim@kau.edu.sa Manuscript submitted January 10, 2018; accepted March 8, 2018. Abstract: Gamification is the use of game elements in non-game context. It is used in many industries and recently in education to increase students engagement. In this paper a gamified data structure course was developed to teach students the main topics of data structure. The effectiveness of gamification on learning performance and students engagement will be evaluated. Results show that gamification has a positive impact on learning performance and it increases the student engagement. Key words: Data structure, e-learning, engagement, gamification, gamified course. 1. Introduction Games begin to pervade the real world and have been a large part of human life. The power of games comes from its ability to engage users and affect their emotions through its mechanics and dynamics. Game mechanics are elements like points, tokens and badges. Game dynamics are designed rules that describe how to collect elements and reach achievements [1], [2].Game mechanics and dynamics are used to trigger player emotion, this is called aesthetics of the game [1]. Gamification has emerged recently to increase user engagement by using these aesthetics in serious context [3]. In education, engagement is considered as a valuable indicator of the academic achievement of the student. One of the most successful methods used to raising students' engagement are games which can create engaging learning for students [4]. There are many types of games used to improve knowledge in different fields but rather than creating actual game, gamification grafts elements that makes video game fun and effective and applies them to any learning environment. Gamification was used in traditional learning. For example: developing a leaderboard containing the best students, giving a ribbon or a badge for the excellent student. In our work we will increase the effectiveness of e-learning using gamification and create a gamified data structure course to increase students' engagement. This paper is organized as follow: Section two presents a background about e-learning and gamification. Section three lists the related works on using gamification in education. Section four presents the system design. Section five explains the system implementation. Section six describes the experimental study. Section seven discuss the results. Section eight present a conclusion and future work. International Journal of e-Education, e-Business, e-Management and e-Learning 193 Volume 8, Number 4, December 2018 doi: 10.17706/ijeeee.2018.8.4.193-211