Does fantasy keep online gamified classes engaging?
Adding a fantasy narrative to a gamified online course helped sustain engagement after novelty wore off.
Source
Incorporating fantasy into gamification promotes student learning and quality of online interaction
Study at a glance
- Design
- Other — Two-semester classroom implementations of GAFCC then GAFCC-F gamification (not a parallel RCT)
- N
- Study 1 n = 26 postgraduates; Study 2 n = 23
- Population
- Postgraduate students, mostly East Asian, in a university course
- Outcome
- Behavioral engagement and learning outcomes after fantasy-enhanced gamification
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Inspect source passages
Does fantasy keep online gamified classes engaging?
These passages occur verbatim in the stored paper text. They support the points listed below; they do not verify every statement in the explanation.
Twenty-six postgraduate students in Study 1 (18 females, eight males)
Twenty-six postgraduate students (18 females, eight males) participated in Study 1.
Study 2 involved 23 postgraduate students (15 females and 8 males)
Study 2 involved 23 postgraduate students (15 females and 8 males).
What they did
Using design-based research in the same postgraduate online course across two semesters, the authors first implemented a GAFCC gamification model, then refined it by adding fantasy (GAFCC-F). They tracked learning performance, forum interaction, and student/teacher perceptions over ten-week semesters.
What they found
In Study 1, most students preferred gamification to lecture-based courses, yet forum posts and quiz attempts dropped sharply after mid-semester as novelty faded. Study 2 suggested the fantasy-enhanced model better supported learning performance and online social interaction than the original model.
The limits
What it doesn't show
Samples were small postgraduate cohorts in one course, so causal generalisation is limited. Semester-to-semester comparisons are not fully randomised experiments, and long-term transfer beyond the course was not measured.
Key terms
- GAFCC model
- A gamification design model built around goals, access, feedback, challenge, and collaboration.
- Fantasy
- A motivational game element that embeds learning in an imaginative narrative or make-believe context.
- Novelty effect
- An early boost in engagement with a new system that fades once learners become familiar with it.
- Design-based research
- Iterative classroom research that tests and refines educational designs in real settings.
- Behavioral engagement
- Observable participation such as posting in forums or attempting quizzes.
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Quiz yourself
What was Study 1's sample size?
Common questions
How many students were in Study 1?
Twenty-six postgraduate students.
What problem appeared mid-semester in Study 1?
Participation dropped sharply after Week 5 as novelty wore off.
What changed in Study 2?
The designers added fantasy to create the GAFCC-F model.
Did students like gamification initially?
Yes—most preferred it to conventional lecture-based courses.
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