Longitudinal effects of persistent leaderboards

Determine whether leaderboards that persist across an academic semester affect the motivation of lower-ranked students over time.

Background

DBWorkout uses a session-bounded absolute leaderboard that resets after each class session, partly to avoid discouragement associated with persistent rankings. The paper contrasts this design with semester-long leaderboards and notes that the motivational effects of sustained ranking have not been adequately evaluated.

The unresolved issue concerns whether persistent leaderboard exposure produces lasting motivational benefits or discourages students who remain near the bottom of the rankings. This question is not answered by the paper’s two-session deployment, which evaluates only the session-bounded design.

References

Critically, whether leaderboards that persist across a semester affect lower-ranked students' motivation over time remains empirically untested, Li et al. note that longitudinal and novelty effects of leaderboard use have not been extensively examined in the literature.

— WIP: DBWorkout: A Gamified SQL Practice Platform to Support Formative Learning in Database Courses  (2610.01174 - Nizamani et al., 1 Oct 2026) in Related Work and Instructional Challenges, Section II