Engaging Students with Gamified Learning Apps: The Role of Teacher Intervention

Abstract

Engaging the secondary level students during the pandemic with productive tasks like learning language through interactive gamified mobile learning apps like Lingua At-tack and Quiz Your English for language acquisition poses certain challenges to teachers. Though the apps have inherent gamified learning features, they still required active intervention of teachers for the effective use of the apps by students. The paper discusses the issues and challenges faced by the teachers in making the students using the apps. The study adopted a mixed-method approach and collected data generated from the Learning Management System (LMS) of the app and the survey questionnaire and semi-structured interviews with the students (n = 44). The number of video lessons completed, the number of hours spent on the platform, and the points gained. The challenges faced by the teachers and the initiatives taken by them and the best practices introduced during three months were documented. The results have indicated that except for a few self-motivated students, the remaining students required teacher’s intervention to sustain the motivation levels and improve their performance. Creating competitive spirit among the participants, and additional challenges, providing platforms for sharing the participants’ experiences and individual feedback showed significant improvement in the engagement levels of the students. The results have implications for the teachers and practitioners in using mobile apps for informal learning outside the classroom.