From Feedback to Features: A Two-Year Comparative Study of Iterative Gamification Design in Engineering Education

Abstract

Gamification in higher education is increasingly recognised as a promising approach to improving student engagement and long-term knowledge retention. However, evidence on the effectiveness of iteratively refined gamified systems – particularly in engineering disciplines and at scale – remains limited. This paper presents a two-year comparative study of a gamified lecture format implemented in a Metrology course at Gdańsk University of Technology, Poland, across 634 students from three degree programmes: Electronics and Telecommunications (EiT), Automatics, Cybernetics and Robotics (ACiR), and Biomedical Engineering (IBM). In the first year (2024/2025), the gamified system – titled "The Metrological Adventures of Gabryś" – replaced a traditional end-of-course test with a series of topic-based assignments incorporating risk-based task selection, narrative elements, and cumulative scoring. Students engaged with course material systematically throughout the semester rather than cramming before a single summative assessment. Following the first cohort, qualitative student feedback was collected and systematically incorporated into the system design for the following academic year. Key changes introduced for the second cohort (2025/2026) included enriched narrative content in the form of easter eggs embedded within assignments, the addition of optional practice tests prior to each graded task, and technical improvements to the task selection mechanism. Comparative analysis of learning outcomes reveals consistent and substantial improvement across all three programmes. Overall pass rates increased from 72.3% to 92.2% – a gain of nearly 20 percentage points. Mean scores rose from 26.3 to 31.7 points. Crucially, the distribution of results shifted markedly upward: whereas in 2024/2025 most students clustered just above the passing threshold, in 2025/2026 the majority achieved scores in the upper range, with 46% of ACiR students and 33% of EiT students reaching the top scoring bracket. These findings suggest that student-driven iterative refinement of gamified systems can yield significant and measurable improvements in learning outcomes. The study contributes empirical evidence – rarely available at this scale in the gamification literature – for the value of closing the feedback loop between students and course designers in technology-enhanced learning environments.