The impact of a forfeit-or-prize gamified teaching on e-learners' learning performance

The present study aims to explore the impact of three reward strategies on adult e-learners' learning performance in a gamified teaching process. One hundred and eighty participants who were recruited for the experiment were evenly assigned to three groups, with Group A adopting the forfeit-or-prize reward strategy, Group B employing the prize-only reward strategy, and Group C applying the no-prize-no-forfeit strategy. A pretest, an immediate posttest, a delayed posttest and two questionnaires were adopted as instruments for the study. The results showed that the forfeit-or-prize pattern and the prize-only pattern could exert a significantly better impact on the e-learners' learning than the no-prize-no-forfeit pattern. Additionally, the forfeit-or-prize pattern elicited better knowledge retention than the prize-only pattern. The two questionnaires revealed that the forfeit-or-prize pattern and the prize-only pattern could stimulate students' motivation in learning, although a high-level anxiety was perceived by the subjects assigned to the forfeit-or-prize pattern. Possible explanations and implications are discussed.