Gamification of a Signals & Systems Course in Electrical Engineering to Increase Mid-Term Engagement

A course on signals and systems is a required component of most electrical engineering undergraduate curriculums and also one of the more challenging entry courses for students into the field. This paper will present and discuss results of a unique pedagogical approach incorporating gamification on top of an already-established interactive e-textbook into a discretetime signals and systems course. Since 2022, this core electrical engineering course has been taught with the use of a tailored interactive electronic textbook, zyBooks, to increase student engagement and learning. However, upon reviewing data gathered within the interactive textbook, overall engagement with the material appears to decline during the middle of the term. Each of the four terms from 2022 to 2023, begins with a class completion percentage of 90% or above prior to the mid-term assessment activity, where completion drops to <tex xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">$62-76 \%$</tex>. In 2024, gamification elements were introduced into the signals and systems course immediately before the middle of the term to determine what impact, if any, there would be on re-engaging students with the zyBooks assessment activities. At the end of the term, an anonymous education survey (using the Likert scale) was provided to students for evaluation of the system. Of the 22 students who completed the survey, more than 95% liked learning in the course with the gamification system in place and more than 72% found the gamification system to be key to their learning. Class completion data from zyBooks also appears to support the positive impact of gamification via higher midterm engagement (<tex xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">$\mathbf{8 2 \%}$</tex>) and higher remainder-of-term engagement (mostly surpassing 90%) than in previous terms.