Does Gamification Improve Flow Experience in Classroom? An Analysis of Gamer Types in Collaborative and Competitive Settings

The use of gamification to engage and to motivate people in several environments, including education is notorious in the last years. However, there are different doubts related to the real effects of the application of gamification in educational contexts, mainly associated with the psychological analysis of the effects of gamification, that in some cases highlights that depending of gamification settings, and the students' gamer types and of the gender, it can cause bad effects like students' disengagement or demotivation. At the same time, the flow theory is a psychological theory that defines a mental state of complete control over a person's actions during a task and can be a decisive factor for better increase the engagement and learning of the students. Aiming to investigate whether the students' flow experience changes depending on the gamification configuration and the student's gamer types and gender, we conducted an experiment in a gamified classroom. We analyzed the flow experience of 18 students during four scenarios with different settings of competition and collaboration, comparing their results according to the gamer type and gender. In general, our results did not indicate significant differences in the students' flow experience in the proposed configurations. As a complement, we performed a qualitative study based on the behavioral observations of the experiment that indicated the competition as a stimulating factor of the gamified experience.