Who wins, who learns? Exploring gameful pedagogy as a technique to support student differences

Gameful pedagogy is a novel approach to teaching that has emerged in the past decade that emphasizes intentionally designing curricula to support student motivation. In this study we investigate how five gameful courses at a large R1 university have impacted students when analyzed with an eye towards equity: are men vs women, underrepresented minorities vs majority students, and first-generation students vs traditional students able to achieve similar amounts of success in gameful courses? Results show that for both men and minority students, there is evidence to suggest they are underachieving in the courses studied as compared to women and majority students, but when we control for prior academic performance these trends disappear. For first-generation students, we see conflicting evidence, with cases of both under and over-achievement present. We again see these discrepancies disappear when we control for prior performance.