Gamification Engagement and Critical Thinking Skills among Student Nurses

Abstract

Aims: To determine the level of gamification engagement and critical thinking skills among student nurses in a private college in Iloilo City. Specifically, it examined students’ behavioral, cognitive, and emotional engagement in gamified learning activities, and determined whether a significant relationship exists between gamification engagement and critical thinking skills. Study Design: This study employed a descriptive–correlational research design. Place and Duration of Study: The study was conducted at a private college in Iloilo City among Bachelor of Science in Nursing students during the academic year 2025–2026. Data collection was conducted in January 2026. Methodology: The study included 325 nursing students selected via stratified random sampling. Data were collected using a structured self-administered questionnaire comprising the Gamification Engagement Questionnaire and the Critical Thinking Skills Questionnaire. Descriptive statistics including frequency, percentage, mean, and standard deviation summarized respondents’ profiles, engagement, and critical thinking. Spearman’s rho correlation was used to determine the relationship between gamification engagement and critical thinking skills. Results: The findings revealed that the majority of respondents frequently used Quizlet (80.9%) and Gizmo (49.5%). Student nurses demonstrated high overall gamification engagement (M = 2.82), with emotional engagement scoring the highest (M = 2.85) and behavioral engagement the lowest (M = 2.74). Critical thinking skills were predominantly at an average level (49.2%), with 48.3% demonstrating high levels and 2.5% low levels; among the domains, analyzing scored highest (M = 3.78) and creating lowest (M = 3.30). Correlation analysis showed no significant relationship between overall gamification engagement and critical thinking skills (rs = −0.07, P = 0.24), although weak positive associations were observed in analyzing, evaluating, remembering, and understanding domains.Thus, the overall null hypothesis is accepted, while it is rejected only for the specific domains where significant correlations were observed. Conclusion: Nursing students demonstrated high engagement in gamified learning and satisfactory critical thinking skills. Despite weak positive correlations in some domains, no significant relationship was found between gamification engagement and critical thinking, suggesting that other instructional and learner-related factors may influence critical thinking development.