Enhancing Student Engagement and Experience Through Gamified Flipped Learning Using Kahoot! in Engineering Education

Flipped Learning has been widely recognised for its potential to enhance student engagement and academic performance. However, its success depends on students completing asynchronous activities, which can be challenging due to motivational issues. This study investigates the introduction of gamification as a strategy to address this challenge by integrating Kahoot-based competitive quizzes into face-to-face sessions within the flipped learning model. This intervention is aimed at increasing student participation, attendance, online engagement, and overall academic achievement. Building on a similar pilot study conducted at the School of Engineering and Materials Science (SEMS), this research extends the implementation to a transnational educational context at Queen Mary Engineering School (QMES), Xi'an, China [1]. The study examines the impact of gamified flipped learning across diverse cultural groups and seeks to identify best practices for optimising student engagement through active learning strategies. The methodology involved the use of Kahoot! quizzes and interactive challenges aligned with learning outcomes to promote knowledge retention and gather data on student performance and engagement. Learning analytics were used to evaluate the effectiveness of the intervention. The results showed an increase in student engagement, higher passing rates, and no failures in the examined module. The latest cohort shows a significant improvement, with a sharp increase in high scores (80+ mark range) and a marked reduction in students scoring below 50 compared to the previous cohort, resulting in a passing rate increase from 87 % to 100 %. The success of this intervention has led to its application in other modules, where similarly positive outcomes are anticipated.