Sustaining Student Motivation in SE Education through Adaptive Gamification: A Cross-Term Analysis and Blinded Field Study

Sustaining student motivation in Software Engineering (SE) courses remains a challenge, as students have diverse backgrounds, varying motivational profiles, and heterogeneous levels of prior knowledge. Gamification is increasingly being used to promote student motivation and engagement, also in SE education. However, approaches often follow a one-size-fits-all gamification strategy that may boost the motivation of some students while limiting its effectiveness and increasing the disengagement of others. In this paper, we present and evaluate an adaptive gamification approach integrated into an Intelligent Tutoring System (ITS) for SE education. Building on the ITS’s ability to continuously track course progress and students' competence levels, the approach adapts gamification elements to students’ motivational profiles, course progress, and individual competence levels. We report a cross-term analysis conducted in an SE course over three consecutive fall terms, including two offerings with traditional learning management systems and one offering that incorporated our ITS approach with adaptive gamification. Within the ITS-supported term, we further conduct a blinded three-group field study comparing no, standard (one-size-fits-all), and adaptive gamification. The results indicate more stable motivation retention and a more coherent perceived learning orientation in the ITS-supported offering, as well as a more favorable engagement profile in adaptive gamification than in standard gamification. We discuss implications for the design of adaptive gamification in SE education to sustain student motivation.