Understanding Student Motivation to Engage in the Contents Under Pressure Digital Game

Abstract

Game-based learning is an effective tool for motivating engineering students to engage with difficult and often complex topics. Although some research has been conducted on how games elicit motivation, additional studies have been suggested. The proposed work leverages Keller’s ARCS-V theory to investigate how desire for a specific outcome within the process safety digital game Contents Under Pressure affects students’ satisfaction or dissatisfaction with their experience. It was observed that students play the game with a desire either to improve themselves for internal satisfaction or to reach a set external objective in terms of academic or career performance. Many students also played the game with the goal to achieve key outcomes as it relates to game-based metrics. Students expressed a mixture of satisfaction and dissatisfaction with the outcome obtained. Those who were satisfied were most often exhibiting behaviors of paragaming or were experiencing immersion in the game, whereas those students that showed dissatisfaction often blamed the game while expressing difficulties with achieving a positive outcome.