Agentic education · Learning science

Actionable companion · Motivation & engagement

Learning with agency: Effects of Gamification on the Benefits of Student Response Systems in Learning of Human Anatomy: Three Experimental Studies

AI-assisted editorial implementation guide, separate from the original research. Proposed actions are not claims or recommendations attributed to the source authors. No independent peer review of this guide is asserted.

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Evidence and context

Title and abstract screening; stage labels describe reported settings, not verified numerical ages. Design labels require full-text appraisal. Reported stage(s): Age / stage not established. Verify the participant population and task before transferring the findings.

Original authors’ abstract, reproduced under the linked source license:

Abstract This paper presents three experiments to assess the impact of gamifying an audience response system on the perceptions and educational performance of students. An audience response system called SIDRA (Immediate Audience Response System in Spanish) and two audience response systems with gamification features, R-G-SIDRA (gamified SIDRA with ranking) and RB-G-SIDRA (gamified SIDRA with ranking and badges), were used in a General and Descriptive Human Anatomy course. Students participated in an empirical study. In the academic year 2019–2020, a total of 90 students used RB-G-SIDRA, 90 students employed R-G-SIDRA in the academic year 2018–2019, and 92 students used SIDRA in the academic year 2017–2018. Statistically significant differences were found between final exam grades obtained by using RB-G-SIDRA and SIDRA, U = 39.211 adjusted p = 0.001 and RB-G-SIDRA and R-G-SIDRA U = 31.157 adjusted p = 0.015, thus finding strong evidence with respect to the benefit of the badges used in RB-G-SIDRA. Moreover, in the students’ SIDRA systems scores, statistically significant differences were found between RB-G-SIDRA and SIDRA, U = −90.521 adjusted p < 0.001, and between R-G-SIDRA and SIDRA, U = −87.998 adjusted p < 0.001. Significant correlations between individual and team scores were also found in all of the tests in RB-G-SIDRA and G-SIDRA. The students expressed satisfaction, engagement, and motivation with SIDRA, R-G-SIDRA, and RB-G-SIDRA, thus obtaining a final average assessment of 4.28, 4.61, and 4.47 out of 5, respectively. Students perform better academically with gamified versus non-gamified audience response systems. Findings can be used to build a gamified adaptive learning system. Keywords: gamified audience response system, E-learning, human anatomy, experiment, badges

What kind of evidence is this?

Intelligent tutoring & adaptive learning · Survey / observational study

Stage: Age / stage not established. Screening labels describe reported context and study-design language. They are not a risk-of-bias rating or proof of effectiveness for an age band.

Study methods · source passage

Three experiments conducted to assess the educational effectiveness of four gamification elements (ranking, badges, teams, and points) were designed. Two experiments employed a gamified CRS and one experiment employed a non-gamified CRS. In the following subsections the methodology is presented.

Limitations and uncertainty · source passage

Gamification has also been successfully implemented in human anatomy education [87,88]. The highest post-test versus pre-test scores were found in a group that adopted a gamified approach, being different from the non-gamified approach used in the other two groups [89]. Nevertheless, an experiment on leaderboard and badges revealed negative effects with the marks of the students’ final exams attending to a communication course [90]. Notice that ranking can generate both stress by the competition and feelings of inferiority in students, resulting in a reduced sense of autonomy and competence [91], thus negatively impacting the performance of the student. Those who fail to go up in the ranking table may feel a lower competence, which could lead to discouragement [92]. Therefore, lower-performing students may not benefit from the gamified presentation [93]. That was the case in our experiment (H1) as previous mentioned, since R-G-SIDRA did not improve the student performance compared to SIDRA. To remove this limitation, R-G-SIDRA depicted leaderboard only when each test was finished. Moreover, the scores were removed when starting each test.

Design the system before the pilot

Document the learner model, mastery rule, hint sequence and adaptation signal. Compare adaptive routing with the same content in a non-adaptive sequence. Check whether early errors lead to persistent low-expectation pathways.

  • Measure engagement separately from achievement. Check whether novelty-driven participation persists and whether it translates to independent performance.
  • Use common rubrics, blind scoring where feasible and a fresh unaided reasoning task. Document permissible assistance and avoid treating AI-detector scores as proof of misconduct.

A 90-day district pilot

  1. Days 1–15 · Appraise. Have the curriculum lead and a teacher read the methods and limitations. Record the study design, sample, comparator, outcomes and evidence gaps. Define a local question that the study can help inform.
  2. Days 16–30 · Design. Treat the paper as background evidence until its population is verified in the full text. Do not assign an age-specific intervention or extend adult results to children. Name an accountable owner and set the baseline, success threshold and budget before implementation.
  3. Days 31–60 · Test. Start with a small voluntary cohort, preserve an accessible non-AI route and require teacher review. Use synthetic or de-identified examples; approve data handling and tool terms through district processes.
  4. Days 61–90 · Decide. Extract the participant ages or education stage, recruitment, task and comparator before selecting a local pilot. If these cannot be established, retain the paper for design discussion rather than age-band efficacy claims. Compare with baseline, document uncertainty and stop or revise if learning worsens, access is unequal or critical errors persist.

The board decision brief

Report the learning problem, evidence quality, participating population, total cost including review time, measured benefit, errors, access differences and remaining uncertainties. Make a dated recommendation to stop, revise or expand. A positive perception survey alone does not establish learning improvement.

Attribution and reuse

Juan J López-Jiménez; José L Fernández-Alemán; José A García-Berná; Laura López González; Ofelia González Sequeros; Joaquín Nicolás Ros; Juan M Carrillo de Gea; Ali Idri; Ambrosio Toval. Effects of Gamification on the Benefits of Student Response Systems in Learning of Human Anatomy: Three Experimental Studies. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health (2021-12-15). https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph182413210

Companion prepared 2026-10-30. Original authorship and DOI are preserved. The abstract is an attributed source extract; the implementation plan is new AI-assisted editorial material, offered under the same CC BY 4.0 license. This guide has not undergone independent peer review.