How Personalization Improves Student Outcomes

• Personalized Learning Tools: Students who engage with educational technology that offers customization options, such as avatars and app themes, demonstrate heightened interest and achieve superior educational outcomes.
• Benefits of Gamification: Customizable gamified educational settings boost students' intrinsic motivation and self-regulation, leading to higher interest and better performance, particularly in math.
• Aligning Interests: By focusing on creating enriching student experiences through personalization, educational apps can meet the performance metrics that schools look for when deciding on technology purchases.

Personalization in EdTech

When designing and marketing an edtech app, we know that the features that sell are very often the features that tell the data story: dashboards for teachers and analytics and reports for administrators.

We agree that edtech applications should indeed improve student outcomes in a verifiable way. That is why our application provides key decision-makers with the tools and analyses they need to make data-informed decisions.

Prioritizing the Student Experience

At the same time, as we have built and marketed our app, we have chosen to focus our development and talking points on the student experience and student success. More specifically, our developmental priorities have been on creating environments and experiences that students authentically connect with, where students feel safe and supported, and ultimately where students thrive as individuals.

One of the ways we support students through their educational journeys is by enabling dynamic customization of the learning environment and experience. Students can customize multiple features, including their avatars, dashboard, and even the theme and background colors of the app. Many of these customization options are connected with our rewards and badging system, which recognizes progress and rewards performance by unlocking advanced features for customization.

By empowering the personalization of their own spaces, students become increasingly invested in their learning, coming to see the learning environment and the experiences therein as something made by them and for them [1]. Within game-based environments, which have been shown to support risk-taking, persistence, and problem-solving [2], this personalization increases support of essential psychological needs, such as internal motivation, autonomy, and competence [3], resulting in improved task performance [4].

How Customization Improves Learning Outcomes

Research on gamification more broadly suggests its potential to significantly support student motivation [5] and improve outcomes in mathematics education more specifically [2, 6]. Existing research into the personalization of gamification is more limited, with most research failing to consider the importance of customization across the spectrum of gamification elements [3].

Effective gamification design in education comprises 21 elements across five thematic categories: ecological (immersion and realism), fictional (storytelling and narrative), social (interaction and collaboration), performance (measuring and evaluating performance), and personalization (individual preferences and motivations) [7].

One of the few studies that specifically explored differences in student outcomes between dynamic customization in gamified environments and one-size-fits-all (OSFA) approaches found that the multidimensional approach to customization improved both self regulation and intrinsic motivation [3].

Studies of adaptive gaming in STEM fields—where the learning experience responds to the needs and abilities of learners in context—consistently show increases in student interest, engagement, confidence, and motivation [e.g., 10, 11]. More specifically, within the field of elementary mathematics, motivation has been shown to positively impact performance [8], and motivational strategies–such as empowering personalization of the learning experience–have been shown to be particularly effective for lower-performing students and students with less interest in math [9].

Our Game-Based Approach to Mathematics Instruction

While we promote the effectiveness of gamification and spotlight the strategies we employ to gamify the student learning experience, we do not utilize the gamification or customization of it as the primary means for improving student outcomes.

In fact, it is probably more accurate to understand our approach as gamifying a game-based approach to mathematics instruction [2]. Gamification involves adding game elements, such as badging and rewards, to the chosen instructional approach. On the other hand, game-based learning refers to using games as the primary learning experience. In this approach, the game itself is designed to teach specific educational objectives or skills. Our game-based learning approach includes elements such as problem-solving, critical thinking, and decision-making within the learning environment.

In this sense, our overall approach to mathematics education is tightly aligned with the effective mathematics teaching practices as defined by the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) [12]. Subsequently, we have developed these practices into and within a digital environment designed entirely to support the development of mathematical abilities in K-8 students [cf. 13, 14].

Balancing Student Needs with School Expectations

There is an interesting tension in the edtech industry, particularly when it comes to edtech applications designed to improve student outcomes. While students are the primary users of these apps, schools are the buyers. In this sense, it is ultimately the value edtech apps deliver to the schools that often most influence purchasing decisions.
Somewhat paradoxically, then, we believe that by making our largest investments into the development of the best student experience, we will have the greatest impact on student performance, and improved student outcomes will necessarily result in the positive benefits schools need to justify their purchasing decisions.

Commitment to Student-Centered Learning and Outcomes

Empowering the customization of their learning journey is just one way we prioritize student learning and improved outcomes. We believe that improved student outcomes require little justification apart from themselves. That is why we have invested so heavily in developing the most compelling student learning experience, considering obvious supports such as appropriate curriculum pathways and formative feedback and less obvious supports such as customization to meet the underlying psychological needs common to all learners. These approaches combined result in increases in motivation, persistence, and ultimately improved performance.

References

[1] Tondello G. F., & Nacke L.E. (2020). Validation of user preferences and effects of personalized gamification on task performance. Frontiers in Computer Science, 2(29), 1-23. doi: 10.3389/fcomp.2020.00029

[2] Stohlmann, M. S. (2023). Categorization of game-based learning in middle school mathematics - A review. Middle School Journal, 5(4)5,16-26. doi:10.1080/00940771.2023.2254175.

[3] Rodrigues, L., Palomino, P. T., Toda, A. M., Klock, A. C. T., Oliveira, W., Avila-Santos, A. P., Gasparini, I., & Isotani, S. (2021). Personalization improves gamification: evidence from a mixed-methods study. In Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction, 5(287), 1-25. https://doi.org/10.1145/347471

[4] Altmeyer, P. L. M., Schmeer, L. V., Kruger, A. (2019). “Enable or disable gamification?” – Analyzing the impact of choice in a gamified image tagging task. CHI. 150. https://doi.org/10.1145/3290605.3300380

[5] Fadda, D., Pellegrini, M., Vivanet, G., Callegher, C. Z., (2021). Effects of digital games on student motivation in mathematics: A meta-analysis in K-12. Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, 38, 304–325. https://www.doi.org/10.1111/jcal.12618

[6] Bang, H. J., Li, L., & Flynn, K. (2023). Efficacy of an adaptive gamebased math learning app to support personalized learning and improve early elementary school students’ learning. Early Childhood Education Journal, 51, 717–732. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10643-022-01332-3

[7] Toda, A. M., Klock, A. C. T., & . . . Oliveira, W. (2019). Analysing gamification elements in educational environments using an existing Gamification taxonomy. Smart Learnimg Environments, 6(16). https://doi.org/10.1186/s40561-019-0106-1

[8] Karnes, J., Barwasser, A., & Grünke, M. (2021). The effects of a math racetracks intervention on the single-digit multiplication facts fluency of four struggling elementary school students. Insights into Learning Disabilities 18(1), 53-77. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/348488364_The_Effects_of_a_Math_Racetracks_Intervention_on_the_Single-Digit_Multiplication_Facts_Fluency_of_Four_Struggling_Elementary_School_Students

[9] Begeny, J. C., Codding, R. S., Wang, J., Hida, R. M., Patterson, S. L., Kessler, S., Fields‐Turner, F., & Ramos, K. A. (2020). An analysis of motivation strategies used within the small‐group Accelerating Mathematics Performance through Practice Strategies (AMPPS‐SG) program. Psychology in the Schools, 57(4), 540-555. https://www.doi.org/10.1002/pits.22334

[10] Gonzales, C. S. G., Munoz, V., & Toledo, P. (2016). Enhancing the engagement of intelligent tutorial systems through personalization of gamification. International Journal of Engineering Education, 32(1), 534-541. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/275970643

[11] Zourmpakis, A-I, Kalogiannakis, M.,& Papadakis, S. (2023). Adaptive gamification in science education: An analysis of the impact of implementation and adapted game elements on students’ motivation. Computers, 12, 1-20. https://doi.org/10.3390/computers12070143

[12] Index - National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (nctm.org)

[13] Hughes, J. E., Thomas, R., & Scharber, C. (2006). Assessing Technology Integration: The RAT – Replacement, Amplification, and Transformation - Framework. SITE 2006 Proceedings (techedges.org)

[14] Thomas, A., & Edson, A. J. (2019). A framework for teachers’ evaluation of digital instructional materials: Integrating mathematics teaching practices with technology use in K-8 classrooms.

Contemporary Issues in Technology and Teacher Education, 19(3), 351-372. A Framework for Teachers’ Evaluation of Digital Instructional Materials: Integrating Mathematics Teaching Practices with Technology Use in K-8 Classrooms – CITE Journal