Lectura Maestra: Gamified Reading Strategy in Undergraduate Business Education

Lectura Maestra is a gamified reading strategy developed at Tecnologico de Monterrey's Campus Laguna School of Business to improve completion and comprehension of mandatory book-chapter readings in undergraduate business courses. The intervention paired five weekly chapters with Kahoot challenges, an individual leaderboard, badge progression across nine levels, and bonus points tied to the course's highest-weighted component, with a narrative metaphor drawn from The Queen's Gambit used only to frame disciplined preparation. The study describes the instructional sequence that led to the design, moving from a final-exam-only approach to two reading quizzes and then to the full gamified model, drawing on seven five-week course groups taught between 2024 and 2026 across 153 students from first to eighth semester.

The principal analysis compared two consecutive second-semester modules in the same curricular unit during 2026: Ideation, taught with Lectura Maestra (n=27), and Prototyping, taught with a final-exam-only approach (n=26). The Lectura Maestra cohort achieved a mean final exam score of 77.37 versus 67.12, a difference of 10.25 points. Welch's t-test indicated significance (t(37.73)=2.67, p=0.011), with Cohen's d of 0.74. Final exam scores counted only correct answers, excluding speed-weighted and bonus points.

The author frames these results as exploratory rather than causal. The cohorts were not randomly assigned, the two modules differed in subject matter and were taught by different instructors, and the examinations were comparable in procedure but not identical in content. The study did not measure reading behavior, motivation, student perceptions, or long-term retention. The authors conclude that the structured gamified design merits replication under equivalent content, common examinations, multiple instructors, and fuller qualitative and longitudinal measurement.