Novelty Effects and Cross-Course Efficacy of Level Up! Gamification

Determine whether the increased engagement observed after introducing the Level Up! Moodle leaderboard-based gamification in introductory statistics courses is attributable to novelty effects of the leaderboard, and ascertain whether such gamification maintains its effectiveness when implemented broadly across multiple courses within a program.

Background

The paper introduced the Level Up! plugin in Moodle to gamify pre-lecture activities in flipped introductory statistics courses, awarding points for timely completion of activities and displaying progress via a leaderboard. Engagement with pre-lecture quizzes increased markedly following the intervention across two cohorts.

The authors note that these courses were likely the only exposure students had to this gamification, raising the possibility that observed engagement gains might be driven by novelty. They explicitly state uncertainty about whether the effect would persist if similar gamification were deployed across multiple courses, motivating investigation of both novelty effects and cross-course generalizability.