Abstract

Background and Objectives: The use of efficient teaching methods has always been one of the fundamental issues in educational systems. Creating change and innovation, and using active learning methods can play an important role in coordinating content and educational methods (Dehghanzadeh & et al, 2013). The dropout rate and low performance of Iranian students in national and international mathematics exams indicate the fact that current educational approaches have not been able to convey mathematical concepts and knowledge well (Zianejad Shirazi & Gholtash, 2019). The interstice difficulty of concepts, skills and arguments in mathematics on one hand, and the inefficiency of teaching methods, lack of transparency in educational goals, and the declining academic motivation of learners on the other hand cause many learners to unable to achieve desirable results in mathematics give rise to their disgust and discouragement. This lesson has been done (Sheivandi, 2017). One of the active methods of learning is gamification. The term gamification means using the elements and mechanics of games in a non-game environment or inducing a sense of play in an environment in order to motivate and attract people to perform specific activities and solve various problems (Kapp, 2012). Gamification was first invented in 2002, however it was not well received until 2010. In 2011, a lot of academic research and studies began to form around it, although over time, a number of educational institutions still do not use it as an educational approach. However, the truth is that in places where this system has been implemented, good results have been obtained (Safai & Rikhtegarzadeh, 2018). Gamification is the use of mechanics, dynamics, and game components such as stages, badges, points, competition, cooperation, and rewards in non- game fields to change behavior. (Asmuni & et al, 2019). Although several studies have been conducted in recent years in the field of gamification inside the country and abroad, still, most studies have comparatively examined gamification as a general method and compared it to traditional methods, even so, fewer studies have examined the effect of the constituent elements of gamification. Therefore, in this study, the effect of competition and cooperation gamification elements on learning and motivation in fourth grade math mathematics course has been studied.

Methods: In this study, quasi-experimental method and pretest-posttest design with three experimental groups and one control group were used. First, the status of the groups was determined with a pre-test score and then the effect of independent variables on dependent variables was investigated. The statistical population of the study included all male students in the fourth grade of elementary school in Divandarreh, who were studying in the academic year 2020-2021. The statistical sample size consisted of 64 fourth grade students consisting of two classes of 32 people who were randomly selected from all classes in the city area of one school. The research samples were randomly assigned to four groups of 16 people. The research instruments included researcher-made learning tests and motivation questionnaire of Aminifar and Saleh Sadeghpour whose reliability coefficient was calculated with Cronbach's alpha criterion for learning test, 0.93, approach motivation, 0.81, and avoidance motivation 0.87. The learning environment of the experimental groups was presented simultaneously and separately for ten sessions using the competition, cooperation and team competition of gamification elements and the control group in the common approach.

Findings: The obtained data were analyzed in two sections: descriptive statistics and inferential statistics. In the descriptive statistics section, in order to identify the patterns governing the data, mean indices and standard deviation were examined. Kolmogorov - Smirnov test was used to determine the parametric or non-parametric data and to select the appropriate statistical test to assess the research hypotheses. Based on the results obtained from this test, at a significant level of five hundred learning and motivation variables in each of the groups of control, competition, cooperation and team competition have a normal distribution (Pvalue>0.05). In the inferential statistics section, multivariate analysis of covariance (MANCOVA) and Tukey post hoc test were used to test the research hypotheses. In order to test the assumptions of MANCOVA, Box test was used to examine the homogeneity of covariance matrices and Levin test was used to analyze the homogeneity of variances and the homogeneity test of regression coefficients. Data analysis in inferential statistics showed that with a significance level of less than 0.05, the use of competition, cooperation and team competition of gamification elements was effective on learning and motivation and a significant advantage in gamified environments over learning (P <0.05) was not observed. Additionally, data analysis showed that (p<0.05) the cooperation and team competition of gamification elements were more effective on increasing motivation than only competition.

Conclusion: The analysis of data obtained from pre-test and post-test showed that the use of competition, cooperation and team competition of gamification elements has been effective on learning curve of the students. Findings of this study is consistent with the results of research done by Batooli & et al (2018), Safai & Rikhtegarzadeh (2019), The results also showed that the use of competition, cooperation and team competition of gamification elements reduce avoidance motivation and increases approach motivation. These findings are also consistent with the results of research by Kotob & Ibrahim (2019), Arezi (2020), Cunha & Barraqui & de Freitas (2018). All the above researches have achieved significant results regarding the effectiveness of using gamification on motivation. However, the results of this study on the effect of gamification elements on achievement motivation are in conflict with the studies of Turkmen & Soybas (2019), Mekler & et al (2017) Lin & et al (2017). Nonetheless, the results showed that there is a significant difference between the approach motivation of the gamified groups with the elements of cooperation and team competition, and the approach motivation of the gamified groups with the element of only competition. In other words, the use of the cooperation gamification element has a greater effect on increasing approach motivation than competition. These results are particularly consistent with the researches of Morschheusera & Hamarib & Maedchea (2019), Fekri (2016), Ter Vrugte & et al (2015). The results of the present study in line with these studies showed that the use of gamification in the form of team competition and cooperation has been more effective in increasing the motivation of learners than the competitive mode. Gamification with the element of team competition and cooperation by enhancing learners’ attention, risk-taking power, confidence, group reward, shared responsibility, and reducing anxiety and stress of failure, has been more effective on participants motivation than gamification with the element of only competition.