Qualitative insights: Student voices Analysis of open-ended responses revealed three main themes reflecting the student experience where the size of each term corresponds to its frequency in the qualitative responses. Firstly, students consistently highlighted the engaging and interactive nature of the gamified tools as key to their involvement. As illustrated by the prominent words in the Figure 2 word cloud such as “fun,” “interactive,” “competitive,” and “engaging,” students felt these activities turned studying into a game, fostering a healthy learning environment (e.g., “The quizzes were fun and time-based—they turned studying into a game!” and “I really enjoyed the competitive aspect of Kahoot and how it made learning more engaging.”). This aligns with research on gamification’s effectiveness in education (Fitriyani, 2025) by boosting emotional engagement and reducing anxiety. Secondly, students valued immediate feedback for clarifying complex concepts and reinforcing understanding. Phrases like “immediate feedback” and “remember what you read” in Figure 1B reflect student appreciation for how answer reviews helped them correct misconceptions and solidify their grasp of fundamental molecular processes (e.g., “Kahoot’s answer reviews helped me realise why I mixed up transcription/translation enzymes.” and “It helped me understand some of the confusing work that we did in 3A, it helped with operons and Ek transcription and translation...”). This immediate feedback is a cornerstone of active learning (Freeman et al., 2014). Finally, while feedback was overwhelmingly positive, students raised practical concerns regarding technological infrastructure and question design. These included issues like slow Wi-Fi (“Slow Wi-Fi meant I lost points—frustrating when you know the answer!”) and the challenge of short response times diverting focus from learning to the game itself (“The main difficulty was the Kahoot tools sometimes taking away from the learning chance with such a short time frame to respond, and yet you start focusing on the game and not always the knowledge and information to be gained.”). Figure 2: Word cloud visualisation, the size of each term corresponds to its frequency in the qualitative responses, with larger words indicating higher prevalence A Journey of Innovation 22
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MjU1NDYx