Personalized Gamification in E-Learning with a Focus on Learners’ Motivation and Personality

Background: This study sought to develop a personalized gamified e-learning system based on students motivation and personality, and evaluate its efficacy with regard to their performance in mathematics. Methods: In this pretest-posttest experimental study, the participants included 117 students already familiar with e-learning systems. They took a mathematics course in January-February 2020, and were randomly assigned to five groups: Personalized Gamification (PG) based on motivation and personality (n=23), PG based on personality (n=23), PG based on motivation (n=23), non-personalized gamification (n=23), and control (n=25). Then the students’ scores and the time they spent on the learning management system (LMS) were compared before and after the personalization procedure. The collected data were analyzed using SPSS version 26. In this regard, independent-samples t-test was used to compare the mean scores at P 0.05 significance level. Results: The personalized game-based learning system tailored to learners’ motivation and personality did significantly improve their scores and promoted their engagement in LMS, as compared to the pre-personalization phase (P 0.05). Moreover, the students’ mean scores increased compared to the non-personalized gamification (P 0.008). Furthermore, a comparison between the control and experimental groups indicated that factoring in both motivation and personality resulted in an improvement in both student grades and the time spent on LMS. However, when considering personality or motivation alone, the scores improved with no significant increase in user time on LMS (P 0.916 in both cases). Conclusion: PG has a significant positive effect on students’ scores compared to the non-gamified system, and it leads to a significant improvement in the learning time spent on LMS, compared to nonpersonalized gamified systems.