Use of Leaderboards to Gamified Drive Student Performance as a Motivational Strategy in VLE Environments

Currently, efforts to improve student performance, reducing repetition and dropout rates, are being supported using technological tools supported by different theories that allow positive effects on participants. This paper aims to evidence how the use of leaderboards gamified boosts student performance as a motivational strategy in VLE environments. A web service for the analysis of student performance and a prototype of a mobile application for the presentation of the leaderboards of different courses are developed. A 7-level Likert scale survey technique is used with two sets of students to determine the effectiveness of the learning activity achievement process with the use of the leaderboards. A confidence level of 95% is achieved in the results, with a margin of error of 2.8%. A total of 101 students from a total of 109, belonging to Universidad Politécnica Salesiana of Ecuador, participated. The first set, 64 undergraduate students, four courses, the second set, 45 graduate students belonging to the master's degree in ICT for education. The results of the perceived impact on performance by the participants show a high pro-average percentage that reaches 80%, in the highest value of 7. The leaderboards prove to be a significant element that allows the teacher, in an adequate and dosed way in its use, to generate a motivation for a positive change.