Applying gamification to improve the quality of teaching and learning of Chemistry in high schools: A case study of Indonesial

The research was conducted with 88 high school students in Surabaya, Indonesia. The Chemistry topic selected was Atoms and Molecules. Computer-assisted games were developed as the learning media and administered in three separate classes in three different schools. The three classes comprised of one Control Group with 28 students, and two Experimental Groups with 30 students each, to ensure test validity.

Three researchers were trained on observation methodology and send to the schools. They were deployed to conduct observations on students who were learning through gamification.

The determination of the control and the experimental groups was done randomly from the school population. The control group did not apply gamification in learning Chemistry (Atoms and Molecules), whereas the two experimental groups applied gamification to study the same topic. The teaching and learning session in each of the three classes was conducted for 90 minutes.

The research started with a pre-test for students in all the three classes that assessed the students’ general ability with a set of questions, followed by 90 minutes of teaching and learning in all the three groups. Observations were made during the teaching and learning process on how students were using computer-assisted games to learn. After the learning of 90 minutes, the students were given a post-test consisting of the same questions as the pre-test.
The results of pre-test and post-test and observations were applied to assess the success of learning outcomes in the use of gamification. Learning activities are declared effective if: (a) student activities observed as “frequent,” and that (b) learning outcomes have achieved classical completeness, experimental group learning outcomes have improved, (c) students give positive responses to class activities, and that (d) teachers provides positive responses to the use of gamification to teach Chemistry.

The design of the pretest-posttest control-group design study is presented below.
Control              O1     XC         O2
Experiment        O1     Xex        O2
Xc    = control treatment
Xex = experimental treatment