Gamified SQL Practice With Confidence Wagering: Links to Metacognition and Summative Performance

Brian Fiegel; Geb Thomas

doi:10.18260/B49A-99-68374

Learning and retaining SQL can be challenging for undergraduate engineering students, particularly those early in their academic programs. The Deliberate Practice Engine is an adaptive e-learning platform designed to support SQL learning through individualized practice, immediate feedback, and a gamified wagering mechanism that prompts students to express confidence before submitting answers. This study examines whether wagering behavior provides insight into students’ metacognitive monitoring and whether these behaviors predict performance on a summative SQL assessment. Across two course offerings (N = 66), students generated 18,391 metacognitive responses. Wagering behavior was strongly bimodal, with most responses at 0 or 100 points. Accuracy increased with wager size: large wagers (100-point and All-In) were correct in 83.3% of attempts, compared to 59.5% for small wagers. Mixed-effects logistic regression confirmed that wager size was a robust predictor of correctness (OR = 2.84 for 100-point wagers; OR = 14.66 for All-In, both p < .001), even after accounting for question difficulty, topic level, format, response time, and student characteristics. These findings indicate that wagering functions as a meaningful behavioral proxy for metacognitive monitoring. To evaluate whether metacognitive behavior predicted learning outcomes, we modeled exam performance separately for lower- and upper-division students. For lower-division students, a composite On-track metric, capturing metacognitive alignment and avoidance of overconfident errors, emerged as a significant predictor of SQL exam scores alongside prerequisite performance and quiz scores (adjusted R² = 0.51, p < .05). No practice-based predictors met selection criteria for upper-division students, whose exam scores were higher and less variable. These results demonstrate that confidence wagering embedded within deliberate practice can reveal metacognitive processes and that such processes are especially informative for early-career engineering students. The findings highlight the value of integrating metacognitive scaffolds into adaptive practice systems and suggest design opportunities for supporting novice learners in technical domains.

Gamified SQL Practice With Confidence Wagering: Links to Metacognition and Summative Performance

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