The Role of Games in Hospitality Management Education

Building upon game-based learning, this study compares hospitality students’ cognition, metacognition, engagement, satisfaction, and performance in a course across two academic terms at an Australian university. One term featured teaching content without any games while the second term incorporated gamification. A quasi-experimental design was used in which surveys, interviews and students’ evaluation reports were utilized. Students demonstrated more favorable cognitive thoughts, and higher levels of engagement and satisfaction in the gamified course. Students’ performance in assessments across the two courses as well as their metacognition were found to be similar. This study presents a game effectiveness matrix with Kahoot as the most effective game in students’ engagement and satisfaction and Virtual Reality valuable for learning and performance. This research note contributes to hospitality education as it is one of the first studies to assess students’ experiences from a cognitive and metacognitive perspective along with presenting a games effectiveness matrix.