The Effectiveness of Wordwall in Enhancing Students’ Engagement and Motivation in Literature Classes

Abstract

In order to enhance students’ engagement and motivation, the integration of technology into instructional environments is becoming increasingly fundamental. In this context, Wordwall is utilized for English Letters students in Universitas Sanata Dharma. This study investigates the effectiveness of Wordwall—an online tool applying gamification principles in non-game contexts—to enhance English Letters students’ learning engagement and motivation in literature classes. Wordwall is chosen among other platforms since it is free to use and students do not need to login to the platform. Therefore, it is deemed to be practical. This study uses quasi experimental post-test design. The population of this study is the students of Introduction to Literature and Culture of English-Speaking Nation of English Literature Class batch 2022. Both groups took a pre-test and post-test and the results were compared to see the variance in the results. Each group received one lesson per week for four weeks as part of the treatments. Lastly, the data were analysed using independent sample t-test with SPSS version 25. The findings indicated that integrating Wordwall into Literature classes had a notable impact in motivating students to actively engage in the learning environment. Employing gamification quizzes in literature classes emerged as an innovative agent to engage students’ interest in reading and interpreting literature works. In addition, the enjoyable and friendly competitive nature in Wordwall also facilitated the students to understand the literature texts better. Importantly, the lecturer may also monitor the students’ progress from the results of the quizzes presented in ranks, leaderboards, or statistics.