How Games and Game Elements Facilitate Learning and Motivation: A Literature Review

Games and game elements are increasingly used by organizations to facilitate learning and motivation, often without a clear understanding how they actually achieve these effects. This may lead to the insufficient design and use of serious games as well as gamified applications. Since the development of such applications is usually expensive, high costs and few realized benefits might result. In order to avoid such unfavorable outcomes, it is necessary to understand the underlying mechanisms that lead to learning and motivation. For this purpose, this study reviews research articles describing the use of games and game elements beyond entertainment and outlines their theoretical foundations. Based on the resulting insights, several theory-driven design guidelines for game-based learning and motivation are derived. This study therefore equips researchers with theoretical insights on how games and game elements facilitate learning and motivation, and practitioners with theory-driven design guidelines for their design and evaluation.