Keeping students engaged can improve their learning. Gamification is a technique that has been shown to improve engagement, transferring the positive effects of videogames. However, the mobile games industry has identified that player retention decreases quickly over time, but it is unclear if this decreasing retention pattern transfers to gamification activities. To check if the behavioral engagement was stable over a 14‐week engineering course, we gamified an existing virtual learning environment (VLE), conducting an observational study for two semesters. Actions performed by students within the VLE were used to measure behavioral engagement, which allows us to track student behavior weekly. To analyze the gamification effect, we divided user actions into two groups: academic and gamified. The results showed that the gamified actions performed by students in the VLE decreased every week, which was significantly higher than the decrease in academic actions. This shows that the decreasing retention pattern seen in mobile games was also present in this study. These results suggest that, just like in mobile games, to sustain the behavioral engagement over a long period of time in a gamified class, additional modern game‐design techniques should be considered.

中文翻译：

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工程课程中使用游戏化虚拟学习环境的学生互动的演变

保持学生参与可以改善他们的学习。游戏化是一种已被证明可以提高参与度、传递电子游戏积极影响的技术。然而，移动游戏行业已经发现，随着时间的推移，玩家留存率会迅速下降，但尚不清楚这种下降的留存模式是否会转移到游戏化活动中。为了检查行为参与在 14 周的工程课程中是否稳定，我们对现有的虚拟学习环境 (VLE) 进行了游戏化，进行了为期两个学期的观察性研究。学生在 VLE 中执行的行为被用来衡量行为参与度，这使我们能够每周跟踪学生的行为。为了分析游戏化效果，我们将用户行为分为两组：学术和游戏化。结果显示，学生在 VLE 中进行的游戏化行为每周都在减少，显着高于学业行为的减少。这表明本研究中也存在手机游戏中出现的留存率下降模式。这些结果表明，就像在手机游戏中一样，为了在游戏化课程中长时间维持行为参与，应该考虑额外的现代游戏设计技术。