**2. Claims made by advocates for gamified learning**

In 2011, Extra Credits, a Youtube channel geared towards the gaming community, published two videos about gamification and its potential impact on education [1, 2]. The claims they made mirrored those promoted by Lee Sheldon in his book, The Multiplayer Classroom [3] and Kapps books [4, 5]. They claimed that the use of game design features, such as accumulative grading, levels, badges, do-overs, and path choices could convert the mundane process of traditional learning into a rewarding experience where students would be more motivated to engage in tasks and learning while feeling a greater sense of agency over their own education. There have been several studies since this time to investigate the correlation between gamified learning and student motivation to learn the subject through this modality. Motivation is key component of language learning which has been found to have significant correlation to proficiency attainment [6]. Most focus on extrinsic motivation provided by badges, levels, etc. [7–9] while others like Bovermann and Bastiaens looked at gamification and its ability to be an intrinsic motivator [10]. Homer, Raffaele, and Henderson [11] go further in stating that intrinsic motivators such as challenge and self-actualization are essential to gamified instruction. Worthy of note is the fact that motivation is a difficult thing to measure. It is a dynamic feature and very few studies have investigated the use of gamification in a longitudinal study. An area of concern is if all education were to be gamified, it would lose its novelty. In the vast majority of studies, the use of gamified learning and its effects on motivation are not distinguished from the boost in motivation scores that occur when encountering novel activities.

While motivation is a valuable piece to be evaluated, the other claim made by Extra Credits also merits further investigation. The claim that using a gamified modality has the ability to improve the sense of agency by the student participants is bold and valuable to explore. Bradbury et al. [12] investigated the amount of agency felt by participants and their actual achievement. They determined that subjects who had partial agency, having to complete all steps in a navigation path, had higher outcomes on their game than those that had full agency. Too often students feel that they have no control, or very limited control, over the courses they take. Hence, students talk about grades as the grade that this teacher has given instead of the grade that the student has earned. Fabrizio Poltronieri [13] presents agency as an integral part of game design. This game feature may give students various paths to choose or can be hard set for the navigation path the participant will "choose". Regardless of how hard set the navigation path is, the participant will have a final sense of agency over the decisions made to follow their chosen path.

Research has shown that modifying the modality used in education has correlational impacts on factors such as motivation and a sense of agency. The research presented here represents positive findings on the potential impact of gamifying education to improve these two factors. These findings create the additional question of what other valuable educational factors can be impacted, for better or worse, by adopting a gamified modality? To explore this question, this chapter will explore principles of good teaching and learning as they are presented by Mind, Brain, and Education Sciences and NeuroELT research. These fields have established principles and maxims of good education, and thus, provide research driven factors to consider when determining what is "good education".
