The use of game elements as a means to stimulate students’ motivation has increased in a number of disciplines across theworld after 2010, but apart from a few exceptional cases, it has not been possible to show a significant effect on academicachievement. In this study, the effects of game elements on academic achievement have been investigated among 458 studentsin a teacher education program, distributed across 10 course instances over 11 years (2010–2020). Statistical analyses indi-cated that a game element consisting of a number of hand-in assignments contributed significantly to the total points of thefinal written exam. Although a comparison with the students’ results in the two previous modules showed that two thirds ofthe positive effect could be explained by selection, the remaining one third of the positive effect could still be explained interms of the game elements significantly improving the achievements on the final written exam.