An Examination And Extension Of The Theory Of Gamified Learning: The Moderating Role Of Goal Orientation

Background. Landers (2014)proposed the theory ofgamified learningto provide a theoretical framework forgamificationresearch. Unfortunately, little empirical work has tested this theory. Thus, the current study aimed to close this gap by examining the theory's mediational pathway as well as exploring the moderating role ofgoal orientationon the pathway from Assessment game attributes (i.e., assessment and progress) toself-efficacyto learning outcomes. Method. A gamified resume course was developed on agamificationsoftware platform. Participants (N= 185) were recruited through Amazon Mechanical Turk and randomly assigned to one of four conditions (i.e.,badges, progress bar, badges and progress bar, and control). Participants responded to a pre-course questionnaire containing demographics and thegoal orientationmeasure, were directed to the course website to complete the gamified resume course and knowledge measure, and were finally re-directed to a post-course questionnaire collecting job search self-efficacy. Results. There was little support for the hypothesized moderated mediation model. However, an interesting outcome of this study was the significant conditional indirect effect of the badge condition for average learning and high avoid performance goal orientations, suggestingbadgescan improveself-efficacyingamified learning. Discussion and Conclusion. A key takeaway of this study was preliminary evidence suggestingbadgesmay help mitigate the negative effects of avoid performancegoal orientationonself-efficacy. This finding demonstrates how individual differences play a role in learners' responses to game attributes in agamified learningexperience. Practical implications, limitations, and directions for future research are discussed.