Guodong Cheng and Crystal Tsay
Recently, Crystal noticed something interesting in her own life. She has been using Zoe, a personalised nutrition app, intermittently since July 2023. After it introduced more gamified features, she found herself sticking with her food diary every single day. At the time of writing, she is on a 66-day streak. Her brain has been “switch-on” to remind her to log meals, complete short 2–5 minute lessons, and get instant feedback on protein, fibre, fats, carbohydrates and food quality. She does not even care that much about the points she gains, yet clearly something is working. She has become much more motivated to diversify her food and even felt proud when she exceeded Zoe’s target of 30 plants per week by reaching 40-plus. More importantly, her behaviour changed. She now eats more deliberately and feels healthier.
That experience reminded us why playful learning matters. Despite being ten years apart, Crystal and Guodong gamified their modules in virtual learning environments (VLEs), i.e., Moodle, to engage learners at University of Greenwich. Gamification means using game elements in a non-game setting (Hamari & Koivisto, 2015). This matters because higher education is facing a wider engagement challenge (Riaz & Clark, 2024). Across many contexts, educators are asking how to design learning that students actively want to participate in rather than simply endure. From our perspective, gamification offers one useful stimulus, especially in VLEs that can otherwise become little more than file repositories.
Most VLEs allow the set up of gamified features, such as progress indicators, badges, challenges, optional stretch tasks, leaderboards, rapid feedback, or social interaction layered onto ordinary learning activities (e.g., forum). For us, playful learning is not about making learning childish. It is about designing experiences that learners want to return to. When done well, gamification can change behaviour, deepen engagement and make learning feel more meaningful (Tsay, Kofinas, & Luo, 2018). Psychologically, this often happens because it supports a sense of progress, gives fast feedback, creates small achievable challenges, and can tap into what self-determination theory suggests as autonomy, competence and relatedness (Tsay, Kofinas, Trivedi, Yang, 2019). This is also broadly consistent with wider research, which points to positive effects of gamification on cognitive, motivational and behavioural outcomes across educational contexts, while also reminding us that such benefits depend greatly on the quality of the design.
Guodong migrated his earlier use of quizzes in physical tutorials to VLE by designing an escape game using templates from Genially.com. Bespoke questions from the game have been used across three modules, one undergraduate (Level 6) module BUSI1717 Internationalisation, Technology & Governments, one large Level 5 module BUSI1314 Business Ethics with more than 400 students, and one postgraduate Level 7 COMP1918 Ethical and Legal Aspects of Business Analytics . Genially has a wide range of (mostly free) templates and features meant that no background in game design was needed, only curiosity and the motivation to experiment. There are various templates that transfer the quizzes into more interactive tasks including hidden-object searches and image hotspots, so students are not just answering questions but working through an engaging sequence of tasks. Guodong chose a haunted house theme and added a 15-minute timer to create competition and intensity.
Guodong’s gamification example in a VLE
The student reaction was extremely positive. It was clear that students enjoyed competing against one another, and course evaluation feedback suggested that the quizzes made learning more “fun”. They also appreciated small rewards for the winners, usually a Chinese knot or sometimes chocolate, and some said the quizzes motivated them to prepare in advance for tutorials. According to the tutors: ““they (students) LOVED this quiz game… I have never seen them so in the zone.” Some tutors also actively use other Genially templates within their own modules.
This gamified learning approach helps to achieve the learning outcomes by applying theories rather than simply understanding them. More specifically, the escape room game places students from all three modules in the case-based challenges in which they must decide which option best explains a situation or identify the ethical issue within a realistic scenario. It also fosters their critical thinking where students need to distinguish between similar arguments and justify why one perspective is stronger than another. Therefore the pedagogical value of the escape game is that it turns theory and concept learning into active judgement and application, with engaging and competitive elements.
However, one of the most important lessons from Crystal’s research is that gamification is not an one-size-fit-all approach to engagement. In her 2017 gamified VLE study involving 136 undergraduate students, participation varied by learner characteristics: female students completed more online essential learning activities than male students, and students with jobs engaged more than those without jobs. The latter finding is especially interesting, as it suggests that a well-designed VLE may offer working students greater flexibility and autonomy in how and when they participate. Course designers may draw on gamer-type literature, such as Bartle’s (1996) categories of achievers, explorers, socialisers and killers, when creating gamified systems. However, rather than assuming learners fit neatly into fixed types, it may be more helpful to take a universal design for learning perspective (Meyer, Rose, & Gordon, 2014) and build in multiple ways for students to engage, participate and demonstrate interest, so that the design remains flexible enough to support diverse learners.
There is also the issue of the novelty effect. Gamified systems often produce an early burst of interest simply because they feel new. But there is no single average point at which that interest wears off. It varies by context and design. In Crystal’s 2019 study, she described a pattern where activity dropped a few weeks after the new system was introduced. Yet she also found that this effect could be reduced. When instructors improved the design, strengthened the learning narrative, communicated more clearly, and made the activities feel more meaningful, student engagement became more sustained over time. In other words, points and badges alone are rarely enough. Meaningful gamification works better than superficial gamification.
To sum up, in a higher education context where student engagement cannot be taken for granted, playful learning gives us one valuable way to think differently about the VLE. As our examples suggest, the goal is not to make learning childish or trivial. It is to design learning experiences that invite curiosity, encourage participation and give learners a reason to come back. Whether through a streak in a nutrition app, a gamified Moodle structure, or an escape-game activity, the underlying principle is similar: thoughtful design can shape behaviour. But playful learning also asks for care. It needs to be meaningful rather than decorative, inclusive rather than one-dimensional, and pedagogically grounded rather than driven by novelty alone. For us, this is why playful learning matters. It reminds us that digital spaces should do more than store content; they should help create learning experiences that students want to enter, engage with and remember.
References
Hamari, J. and Koivisto, J. (2015) ‘Why do people use gamification services?’, International Journal of Information Management, 35(4), pp. 419–431.
Meyer, A., Rose, D.H., & Gordon, D. (2014). Universal design for learning: Theory and Practice. Wakefield, MA: CAST Professional Publishing.
Riaz, T. and Clark, W. (2024) ‘Challenges and best practices in classroom and student engagement at University of the Arts London’, QAA Blog, 12 November.
Tsay C.H., Kofinas A.K., Trivedi S.K., Yang, Y. (2019) Overcoming the novelty effect in online gamified learning systems: An empirical evaluation of student engagement and performance. Journal of Computer Assisted Learning. pp. 1–19. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/jcal.12385
Tsay, C.H., Kofinas, A.K., & Luo, J. (2018). Enhancing student learning experience with technology-mediated gamification: An empirical study. Computers and Education, 121, pp. 1-17. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compedu.2018.01.009
Guodong Cheng has been a lecturer at the University of Greenwich since 2023. His past experience and research interests can be summarised as focusing on marginalised and vulnerable people in developing countries. He completed his Ph.D. in Management at Aston University (UK), where he specialised in business and human rights as well as business ethics more broadly. His research examines the contextualisation of UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights in multinational corporation supply chains in China.
Email: g.cheng@greenwich.ac.uk
LinkedIn: : guodong-cheng-LD
Crystal Tsay is Associate Professor of Management and Co-Director of SEBE at the University of Greenwich. Her research shapes responsible, evidence-informed integration of digital technologies to enhance inclusive learning, strengthen assessment practice, and deepen cross-cultural understanding across UK and global (TNE) contexts. She co-leads a QAA Collaborative Enhancement Project developing practical approaches to AI-supported, collaborative authentic assessment redesign, and leads Greenwich’s engagement with Jisc’s International Students’ Digital Experience (ISDX) work. Her work has appeared in the British Journal of Educational Technology, Computers & Education, and the Journal of Computer Assisted Learning. She has led award-winning initiatives, including a UKCISA project supporting Chinese Direct Entry students (Highly Commended, Paul Webley Innovation for International Education), and received University of Greenwich awards for pedagogic research and technology-enhanced online learning.
Email: h.tsay@greenwich.ac.uk
LinkedIn: crystal-han-huei-tsay