Assessing the Impact of Gamification Tools' Usability on Student Engagement: A Comparative Study in Engineering Education

Student engagement tools play a pivotal role in modern educational settings by fostering interactive learning experiences. This research aims to study the potential relationships between the usability of student engagement tools used in higher education and student task-level engagement. To assess this relationship, a comparative usability evaluation of two prominent student engagement platforms, AhaSlides and Kahoot!, was conducted among 15 engineering students enrolled in an advanced big data analytics course. The standard System Usability Scale (SUS) questionnaire is utilized and adapted to evaluate the usability of each system under question. Users used the SUS survey to rate the overall usability of the engagement tools. In addition, three usability experts assessed AhaSlides and Kahoot! for interface design and usability using Nielsen's heuristics. Additionally, the Student Engagement Questionnaire (SEQ) is used to measure student engagement at the behavioral, cognitive, and attitudinal levels. Results indicate that differences in the engagement platform's usability influence students' behavioral task-level engagement by a statistically significant mean difference
$(\mathrm{t}=2.4),\mathrm{p}=0.033, \mathrm{d}=0.61)$
that favored AhaSlides. However, the effects of usability features on students' cognitive and attitudinal engagement varied.