Examining Effects of Gamification Elements in an Intelligent Tutoring System for 7th Grade English Learners on Their Motivation – A Randomized Controlled Field Trial (Pre-registration)

Gamification elements added to digital learning environments are considered beneficial to maintaining the learners’ motivation, and received increasing interest also in second language learning research. However, the impact of specific gamified elements on students’ motivation has rarely been examined in the second language learning context. To fill this gap, in the current study, we will examine different theory-driven gamification elements based on underlying mechanisms of achievement motivation implemented in the ITS FeedBook (Meurers et al., 2019; Parrisius, Wendebourg, et al., 2023), a web-based English workbook targeting seventh-grade learners of English as a second language in German academic-track schools. In an institutionalized learning setting, we will investigate the motivational impact of a learner dashboard, a pedagogical agent, and individualized feedback with a large randomized controlled field trial. In this pre-registration, we describe our theoretical rationales, our research questions and hypotheses, and our statistical analysis plan. unknown other