The success of learning processes within higher education strongly depends on the student’s motivation. Therefore, gamification focuses on increasing the motivation by using game elements during the student’s introductory phase to higher education. Today every institution of higher education provides at least one learning management systems (LMS) for learning and organizational support. This situation opens a multitude of opportunities to increase student motivation through gamification using existing digital infrastructure.

How can educational technologies such as LMS be gamified? How can you address different kinds of students? The answer to this question lies within game thinking and how it helps to reshape digital learning at institutions of higher education. Presenting gOPAL will give an insight into a gamified LMS as an online support service for first-year students. gOPAL users continuously receive helpful information for their studies at Technische Universität Dresden and their regional surroundings. But how are users motivated to stay in the system and access this information? In order to stimulate a continuous usage of the service, it has been gamified. Different game design principles and elements, such as storytelling, quests, rewards, achievements, visual presentations, feedback, surprise, and curiosity were embedded in the scenarios and scientifically investigated. The usage of gOPAL has been evaluated through an online survey and the analysis of user data.

The paper describes the elements of gOPAL, as well as the results of the evaluation in detail. In addition, the findings of a quantitative study on user types in academic education are used to show different user types among first-year students as well as differences among students in terms of gender and their faculties. During this study, 249 first-year students were asked about their game preferences based on Marczewski's HEXAD questionnaire. Furthermore, the contribution will deliver an insight into the gamification of running systems, how student services or academic educational programs can be gamified through LMS and which game design elements increase the attractiveness of such systems for students.