Personalized games for computer science education in higher education: the effect of personalization feature on students’ engagement and flow state

Extensive studies have been conducted to examine the effectiveness of the personalized games on students’ engagement and flow. However, engagement and flow were examined separately rather than concurrently in previous studies. In fact, engagement and flow are two interrelated entities and share similarities but the occurrence differs. How the interrelationship between engagement and flow impacts student learning in the personalized gaming environment has been seldomly investigated. Aiming to fill this gap, this study examined the impact of personalization on student engagement and flow concurrently within a gaming environment. The results showed that personalization had a significant impact on students’ engagement, specifically students’ focused attention. However, a significant difference in flow was not observed. Flow (primarily concentration, autotelic experience, and loss of self-consciousness) exhibited a strong correlation with engagement (primarily focused attention). The findings indicated that the personalization game feature could be used to engage students but needs to incorporate additional non-game features, such as instructional features, to promote the flow.