Aging Collagen: Fostering Students’ Motivation and Understanding through Meaningful Gamification

Although gamification has been used in education for many studies, the focus has primarily been on rewards-based gamification, with limited attention to meaningful gamification. This study represents the design and evaluation of a meaningfully gamified educational tool, Aging Collagen, aimed at enhancing intrinsic motivation and learning outcomes regarding collagen among lower secondary students. The design of Aging Collagen followed the guidelines from the RECIPE framework proposed by Nicholson (2015) and incorporated additional research findings that align with this framework. Nineteen students (aged 10-12) of an international school in the Netherlands participated in the study. Data was collected through focus-group interviews, surveys, and knowledge tests. The results indicated a high level of intrinsic motivation among students and an improvement in their understanding of collagen. This study identified five key factors that contributed to students’ intrinsic motivation: sensory stimuli, simple language, interactive elements, minigames, and virtual characters. This study highlights the potential of meaningful gamification in educational contexts. Future research should address limitations of the current study, such as a lack of long-term assessment of outcomes, and further explore the RECIPE framework’s applicability across various scientific topics to validate and enhance its effectiveness in other domains as well.