Re-engaging underachievers: Toward a participation internalization approach to gamified online learning design

Considering the low involvements of underachievers in online learning, we suggest a participation internalization approach to leverage gamification to inspire their engagements. The crux of our design is to offer a holistic progressing view to engage underachievers, and thus external reward and internalized impetus are served as two-pronged perspectives targeting their participation and internalization processes, respectively. We review three categories of the deficits that underachievers are suffering in their behavioral, emotional and cognitive engagement. For each deficit, we propose various affordances and summarize the corresponding gamified features to cure. By providing different kinds of gamified features in different stages, their hierarchical engagement will be piecemeal attained and intrinsic motivation will be gradually cultivated thereafter.