TITLE

Gamification in Study Abroad Pre-departure: A Landscape Review

TOPIC

Exploring the possible effectiveness of using gamification as a tool to share information essential in study abroad preparation for U.S. college students.

CHALLENGE TO ADDRESS

I have been an international educator for close to twenty years and have prepared hundreds, perhaps even thousands of college students to embark on their study abroad program. Preparation generally consists of a large number of written materials, including handbooks and emails, as well as in-person sessions, typically with interactive discussions and activities but a large amount of lecture as well. The amount of information for the professional to impart to be considered to be in line with both best practice and doing one's due diligence is considerable; everything from visa guidance and intercultural communication to international health insurance and adjusting to different academic systems.

Students preparing to study abroad often face an overwhelming amount of information. This flood of materials can leave them feeling discouraged, struggling to stay motivated to read everything, and unable to manage the sheer volume of content effectively. Over the course of my career, I have seen students progressively become resistant to reading through the materials (even short emails) as well as their attention spans shrink. This is a challenge to study abroad educators as it is necessary for students to understand the information that is shared and be engaged enough to process the information. Failure to do this can lead to a lack of preparation that impacts their ability to meet important deadlines and function successfully in their host country and institution. Staff on both the home and host campuses face additional workload when they need to assist students with issues that could have been prevented if the pre-departure information had been properly read and understood.

Evidence and support materials explaining the challenge

As referenced, there is an enormous amount of information to be shared that is considered to be part of best practice in the education abroad field that must be covered during the pre-departure phase. The official standards organization for the field of education abroad is the Forum of Education Abroad which every few years publishes a revised version of their Standards of Good Practice. If one clicks on the link below, it gives an idea of the enormity of the task at hand.

The Forum of Education Abroad: Standards of Good Practice: https://www.forumea.org/standards-of-good-practice.html. See pages 31-35: 

I currently am the Dean and Director of Education Abroad at Dickinson College. To highlight another example of the breadth and depth of necessary information, I will share our Dickinson College Moodle Course Table of Contents for Study Abroad Students. This is an upgrade from the voluminous paper handbooks we used to share with students several years ago. This screenshot shows only the general education abroad Moodle site; there are also additional Moodle sites with information for each individual program that students must read through and process.

In a 2023 article (Kosman, et al.) which in part explores study abroad pre-departure preparation for students, they provided a summary of topics to be covered expressed by their research participants: 

The importance for students to be appropriately prepared for their study abroad program was consistently expressed by all participants. All staff agreed pre-departure preparation was required on academic matters (course/subject requirements, assessments), administrative logistics (accommodation, weather, food, language, vaccinations, health and safety, living standards in the community), cultural knowledge (social customs, appropriate salutations, dress etiquette, religion) plus the inclusion of previous participant perspectives and insights. Some staff reported including additional topics such as self-care, cognitive preparation, child protection, international development topics (for example, poverty) with some including “a session on voluntourism” (Professional 6), where people pay to volunteer in development or conservation projects. Staff indicated that the inclusion of these additional topics was in recognition of the need to challenge students to think more deeply about their social position and that of the community they will be immersed in (p. 482).

Undisputably, there is an enormous number of topics that a study abroad office must or should cover with students. Making this task more complicated is the perceived observation of Gen Z students lacking long form reading ability, or willingness and their lack of attention span. Recent popular articles and scholarly references discuss these issues. In 2024 and 2025 Psychology Today featured blogs entitled "The End of Reading" and "The Reading Crisis in College" which featured observations by college professors on the inability for their students to engage with long passages, preference for short-form texts and a tendency to just skim through readings and thereby not grasping the content. The blogs also reference the diminished reading of entire books in middle and high school and the frequency of reading short text messages and posts on social media. A professor writing an opinion piece for Slate blamed both academic preparation (such as "teaching to the test" in K-12) and the ubiquitous smartphone. Interestingly he acknowledged that he and his fellow professors admit being trapped in the throes of their smartphones as well but in his opinion, due to growing up during a time before smartphones existed, they were able to turn their attention span "on" per se when they needed to focus.

The Chronicle of Higher Education in April 2025 produced a brief video entitled “Why Aren’t Students Reading?” that gives some possible theories and observations being made by higher education professionals.

Link to Chronicle webpage and video: https://www.chronicle.com/featured/student-success/why-arent-students-reading?utm_campaign=che-ci-cnt-ci-asc-reading&utm_medium=em&utm_source=mkto&utm_content=25-04-11-v1&mkt_tok=OTMxLUVLQS0yMTgAAAGaDRVmaHuGh_K7pAwceVKYrmHjOiUQzOnr7OYf8ubeyauwtOOsYAKw-1za2y1SS5ev4lucnC_an5RcbxQaFi3XpLg_zfCayQPUzfQlM_lzr-Pstl0

Interestingly, the video referenced challenges with mental health as an additional explanation, citing it as a connection to students having a feeling of being easily overwhelmed by too much information. This assertion is backed up by recent data compiled by the American Council on Education (2025), with anxiety representing the top concern:

From a research perspective Rixsiyevna authored a 2025 article entitled "Strategies for Overcoming Attention Problems in Contemporary Education". In this piece the author cites the rising use of smartphones, social media, and instant messaging, in addition to information overload making it difficult to focus, as some of the culprits for attention span issues. One of the suggested strategies for educators, is to implement gamification as a learning tool: 

The application of game elements—such as points, rewards, and competition—has been shown to increase student engagement and attention. By turning learning into a game, students are more likely to remain motivated and focused. Gamification also encourages students to take an active role in their learning process, rather than passively receiving information (p.873-4).

Given the challenges of having students read, process, and engage with the enormous amount of written material for pre-departure, I am exploring whether gamifying some of the necessary information could be a useful way to break up the various learning delivery methods and improve the pre-departure experience and outcome for everyone. In thinking about the continuum of processing and retaining information from experiential education (essentially studying abroad) to reading about a topic, the sometimes-controversial Cone of Experience theory (1946) by Dale comes to mind. However, in a 2015 conference paper by Davis and Summers in 2015, they shared the following diagram (p. 2):

In their conclusion, they found that experiential activities significantly enhanced the learning outcomes of their leadership course. It is significant that in the above diagram, the next best learning activity to “doing the real thing” is to “simulate or model a real experience.”

Encouraged by the research with the challenging task at hand for international educators, I have developed the following research questions to explore this topic.

RESEARCH QUESTIONS

• How does gamification impact learning outcomes, specifically in reading comprehension or information processing?
• Can gamification increase student engagement with the subject material?
• Can gamification used as part of study abroad pre-departure preparation increase engagement and comprehension of the important information students need before they study abroad?

LITERATURE TO EXPLORE RESEARCH QUESTIONS

Gamification for literacy, information processing, and learning outcomes

The gamification literature that exists focuses on course-based outcomes or references fields outside higher education. However, that does not mean one cannot explore what research can tell us about how useful game-based learning may be to improve the processing of information and meeting the ultimate objectives of comprehension. In a 2024 article by Lampropoulos & Sidiropoulos, they reported out on their longitudinal study comparing online learning, traditional and gamified learning. As most institutions would likely currently use a combination of online learning, such as Moodle, and in person sessions, the addition of gamified learning and its comparative outcomes is helpful to examine. In conducting a quantitative study over three years they found that in all aspects of measurement (success rate, excellence rate and average grade) that gamified learning achieved the highest score. They also noted higher levels of learning motivation and engagement, and students reported enjoying this method of learning.

Given the in-depth challenges noted regarding students long-form reading comprehension (perhaps stemming from earlier education levels), it is important to examine research from this pedagogical perspective. In a 2020 article researchers (Chen et. al.) used a reading annotation system with gamification mechanisms with fifth graders in Taiwan. Using an experimental and a control group, they found that students who were using the gamified annotations produced both higher quality and quantities of annotations and showed higher engagement with the activity. This study did not show a significant difference in reading comprehension between the two groups, but the researchers pointed out that future studies could be improved by extending the length of the experiment and taking a closer look at the age of the participants and their psychological and learning characteristics into consideration.

Looking at the research in a completely different direction, one can seek out what the field of human resources can tell us about the use of gamification in learning presumably with participants at least several years older than the traditional aged college student. However, the connection in the learning activity not being attached to a course grade is an important similarity to pre-departure learning which for most institutions is not part of a credit baring activity. In a 2024 article by Capatina, et. al., in using a mixed methods approach, the researchers found that using gamification in their corporate training enhanced knowledge retention and boosted the ability for employees to apply this knowledge effectively at work. It is important to note that the researchers used three theoretical frameworks to design their study:

1.  Cognitive load theory - optimizing learning by managing the mental effort required to process information. Short video explaining Cognitive load theory: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WmaXayvw5c8
2.  Self-determination theory - examining the role of intrinsic motivation in driving human behavior, thereby encouraging the desire for self-direction and acomplishment through a gamified learning environment. Short video explaining Self-determination theory: https://youtu.be/IgzQULNUmD8
3.  Social exchange theory - where individuals seek to maximize benefits in social behavior, participants would be more willing to share their knowledge in skills if it benefited them through badges or on a leaderboard. Short video explaining Social exchange theory: https://youtu.be/viwUxl8WQl0

Given that the aim of education abroad professionals is to enhance knowledge retention of pre-departure materials so that then this knowledge may be applied at the study abroad site, gamification of some of these materials could be an effective tool that is supported by the preceding theoretical frameworks: cognitive load theory, self-determination theory, and social exchange theory. 

Gamification for student engagement

Engagement with the information is key in the study abroad pre-departure phase. Weeks after being added to their pre-departure Moodle course at Dickinson, we still find students who have yet to even log in and open the Moodle site, despite the extensive list of to-do items with time sensitive deadlines looming. We observe that many students in addition to juggling all of their courses, tend to over commit themselves to a large number of obligations such as work, internships, research, sports, and various clubs. We are competing for their attention when the study abroad experience may feel so far away, and they are not yet in the frame of mind to give it serious thought. Unfortunately, they often don't have the luxury of putting the necessary information off until a later time.

This juggling of responsibilities connects well with Allehaidan and Wan Zainon's 2024 publication examining the moderating role of concentration within the context of gamification and student engagement. The researchers found a statistically significant positive correlation between attitudes toward gamification and student engagement, especially at higher concentration levels. Their main takeaway was that while employment of gamification was indeed helpful for engagement, it must be employed in way that tailored it to a conducive learning environment and perhaps implementing rewards and challenges in short, gamified tasks to promote deeper engagement. This clearly has implications for both the length and amount of information that could be employed in a single game activity as well as in examining where in the pre-departure process this method would be the most conducive.

While Dickinson College is an in person, residential institution, if one were to impart all of the pre-departure information in person to the students, it would probably leave everyone stuck in a classroom for at least an entire weekend of endless sessions. Therefore, there is no choice but to employ an LMS system like Moodle for online and asynchronous learning. While not an exact match to the pre-departure framework, in 2017, Australian researchers (Looyestyn, et. al.) conducted a systematic review on whether gamification could increase engagement in online programs. In examining 15 studies, they found that 12 studies reported significant positive effects in engagement with using gamification. Key points from the article noted that effectiveness was seen in short-term use and that using leader boards were a particularly effective element in gamification. They also reported positive "downstream" impact which they characterized as health behaviors and learning outcomes.

Design frameworks for gamification

One of the theories that has been closely associated with gamification, has been the Self-determination theory (SDT) developed by Deci and Ryan (1985) that was previously mentioned in the Capatina, et. al. research. This framework looks at understanding human motivation while emphasizing the role of intrinsic motivation and the psychologoical need for personal growth. In 2015, Lamprinou and Paraskeva produced a paper outlining their gamification design framework using SDT with the goal of activiting students' intrinsic motivation in learning versus extrinsic motivation. Using games plugged into Moodle, they developed a framework that satisfied the three needs of SDT:

1.  Antonomy - used immediate feedback, meaningful choices, clear learning goals
2.  Competence - used scaffolding, control of learning process, fun learning activities
3.  Relatedness - learning communities, collaboration, discussion & mutal assistance, social status & badges

While the researchers found this technique to be successful in enhancing student motivation, they emphasized the importance of building in flexibility for student autonomy when utilizing the games in order to satisfy the needs of the SDT framework. In practice, one could see giving the students the ability to choose when or in what order they complete the games in order to satisfy this need for autonomy. Alternatively, students could be given the choice to read about a topic, play the associated game on that topic, or both.

SUMMARY OF RESEARCH AND IMPLICATIONS FOR USE IN STUDY ABROAD PRE-DEPARTURE

There are very few studies on higher education and gamification of information for non-credit/course purposes that were appropriate for the research questions. Additionally, there are a complete lack of research studies specifically on the effectiveness of using gamification in study abroad pre-departure information delivery. As a result, examining how gamified pre-departure information could be successfully utilized for study abroad students relies on a review of the impediments to information comprehension and engagement and the tangential literature on gamification in the learning process.

In reviewing the collected information from experience, popular, and scholarly literature, college students preparing to study abroad are challenged by the immense amount of reading and information processing that is presented to them during the pre-departure phase of study abroad. Various theories for the challenge are the lack of experience in reading entire books before entering college, the competing priorities of their academics and outside activities, feeling overwhelmed and anxious by the volume of materials, and their constant use of text messages and social media via smartphones that predisposes them to prefer processing short pieces of content and have short attention spans. This is of course a generalization as there are many engaged students who fully read and process their pre-departure materials, however almost any educator working with undergraduates will most likely bemoan the growing trend of students unwilling to read and being continually asked questions where the answers have many shared multiple times in writing.

Given the importance of the information shared during study abroad pre-departure, it is incumbent upon education abroad professionals to find a way to be open to innovative ideas so that students are engaged and process the information that is crucial to their upcoming sojourn. Adding elements of gamified learning into the mix of delivery methods based on the observed challenges and the above research would be worth exploring given the positive outcomes generally demonstrated in other contexts. Gamification studies have shown that not only does it increase engagement with subject material, including making it more fun, but also enhances knowledge retention and boosts the ability to apply it within a real-world context. The research also suggests that it would be effective for short-term use (which applies to the nature of pre-departure) and would benefit from a social element that integrated leaderboards. Additionally, employing short games, with clear learning goals, control over when to engage, and immediate positive feedback would potentially ensure that professionals would see positive outcomes in adding a gaming element to pre-departure.

PRACTICAL APPLICATIONS

At this time, there is only one company known in the education abroad field that has created gamified and role play modules for study abroad offices to assist in pre-departure. Established as a "Public Benefit" company, WorldKind Academy offers study abroad offices ready made learning tools, created by instructional designers and informed by international educators, that can be deployed during the pre-departure phase with customization options for institution specific needs. Education abroad offices are invited to view both their sample programming: https://worldkindacademy.com/program-samples and the variety of modules that can be offered: https://worldkindacademy.com/modules. In March of 2025, WorldKind was awarded the Forum on Education Abroad’s InnovateEA Award at their annual conference for their novel work. 

To get an idea of what they have created it is helpful to view screenshots from WorldKind’s website highlighting their modules and the rationale for some of their modules.

There are several applications that are available for educators to create their own games or gamified learning elements. However, given that education abroad offices tend to have small staffs and already are overwhelmed, creating their own games would be impractical. WorldKind at this time is the only known provider that offers fully formed gamified pre-departure information that education abroad professionals can implement for their students. As institutions continue to sign up for WorldKind's pre-departure services, one can imagine the development of research studies that could truly test the effectiveness in both information processing and engagement through the  gamified method of sharing information with study abroad students.

REFERENCES

Active Break. (2022, November 25). What is Self Determination Theory? [Video]. YouTube. https://youtu.be/IgzQULNUmD8

Allehaidan, A. F., & Wan Zainon, W. M. N. (2024). Gamification and student engagement in higher education: The moderating role of concentration. Amazonia Investiga, 13(79), 57-70. https://doi.org/10.34069/AI/2024.79.07.5

American Council on Education. (2025, April). Key mental health in higher education stats. Retrieved from https://www.acenet.edu/Documents/Mental-Health-Higher-Ed-Stats.pdf

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Chen, C.-M., Li, M.-C., & Chen, T.-C. (2020). A web-based collaborative reading annotation system with gamification mechanisms to improve reading performance. Computers & Education, 144, 103697. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compedu.2019.103697

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