Utilizing Adaptive Gamification in an Intelligent Tutoring System for Software Engineering Education

Gamification is increasingly applied in Software Engineering (SE) education to enhance student motivation and engagement. However, existing approaches often follow a one-size-fits-all strategy, which fails to account for the diverse motivational profiles of students. This can result in limited effectiveness and disengagement. In this paper, we present an adaptive gamification concept for MEITREX, an intelligent tutoring system (ITS) in SE education that tailors gamification to students' HEXAD player types, course progress, and competence level. We conducted a requirements and user analysis to identify motivational challenges and individual preferences in SE education, which guided the design of our concept. We developed and implemented the concept in MEITREX, integrating adaptive gamification elements with student analytics, and evaluated it with twelve students in a demo course. Results show that students perceived the system as adaptive to their learning, with quests and progress indicators improving orientation and motivation. At the same time, the effects on procrastination were moderate, indicating a need for additional time management tools. We present this study as a pilot, and we make the source code and collected data publicly available to facilitate replication and longer-term studies. The findings of our first evaluation in a demo course are relevant for researchers investigating personalized learning, educators aiming to improve SE education, and developers of learning technologies seeking to integrate adaptive gamification.