Article Review 1

Tittle: How Does Gamification Effect The Learning Process?

Author: Mathew Lyngh (2017)

This article tells about the effects of gamification in learning process. In the
context of education, the trend of using game elements in non-game contexts aims at
increasing the engagement and motivation of students, capturing their interest to
continue learning and influencing their classroom behavior. 

Gamification in education can improve motivation and engagement. Game

elements such as immediate feedback and earning badges for completing the
challenges successfully are strongly influential on increasing the students’ drive in
engaging in these games even within the walls of a classroom.

Not only that, gamification in education may optimize the brain’s processing of
new information. This may be facilitated by the general aspects of gamified lessons,
with the audio-visual presentation, minimized bites of schematized information, short
time lapses, and often repetitive patterns.

In conclusion, we are at a time where both children and adults spend hours at a
time on games. There is evidence that this may have led to changes in the brain
functions. Thus adopting gamification in education to a certain extent may be a
healthy initiative to modernize education to go hand in hand with the new digital era.
Article Review 2

Tittle: Improving Participation and Learning with Gamification

Author: Gabriel Barata, Sandra Gama & Daniel Goncalves (2013)

This article tells about how gamification can be applied to education in order to
improve student engagement.

Education is being shaped by the use of other techniques like gamification:

adding game elements to non-game contexts. Gamification relies on the motivational
power characteristic of good games which, unlike traditional learning materials, can
deliver information on demand and within context, balancing challenge difficulties
according to one’s abilities. This prevents players from becoming bored or frustrated,
and allows them to experience flow.

By application of game in teaching and learning process, there were significant

improvements in lecture attendance and in the number of downloaded lecture slides,
with the most gains in both initiated threads and reply posts on the forums. This
suggested that students were more participative and proactive, enjoyed attending
classes more and paid more attention to support materials, which seems to reflect a
deeper engagement with the course.

From this article, we get the point that evening out challenge distribution over the
term and making them fairly rewarded might significantly improve student
participation and performance. Students seem to score better with the gamified
version of the course and grade differences between them seem to decrease.
Article Review 3

Tittle: Using Game Elements to Increase Student Engagement in Course

Assignments

Author: David Des Armier (2016)

This article talks about the increasing of student engagement using game
elements. Gamification incorporates game-elements in non-gaming situations to
enhance student engagement and desired behavior.

Nowadays, the education also uses games. The principles inherent to video
games could help learning environments become more engaging and foster student
inquiry, goal setting, and personal achievement. Thus, educational games are
generally relegated to supplemental activities and rewards rather than integrated
experiences to increase engagement and participation.With the rise of gamification
strategies, gaming principles may be more easily integrated into formal education
settings to promote desired behaviors in and outside of classroom contexts. 

When students lack prior knowledge to situate new learning experiences, exhibit
high levels of anxiety, or lack motivation, instructors may need to provide more
guidance and scaffolding within student-directed activities.  Leveraging games is one
instructional method to scaffold these experiences while retaining elements of
student-directed learning, because games provide immersive environments, rules,
rewards, and feedback mechanisms that can be aligned to learning outcomes.

In conclusion, gamification promotes student engagement. By incorporating

competition, leader boards, leveling opportunities, achievement rewards, and other
game mechanics in classroom activities found that student engagement and in-class
participation increased. Students became more engaged in classroom activities when
role-playing and problem-based scenarios, multiple pathways to success, and
narrative game mechanics were introduced.
Article Review 4

Tittle: An Analysis of Gamification Elements To Enhance Learning Engagement

Author: Siti Nurul Mahfuzah Mohamad, Sazilah Salam & Norasiken Bakar (2017)

This article is about the gamification elements in enhancing the learning

engagement. Gamification has been regarded as one of the important ideas on the
educational prospect.

Gamification is a use of game design elements in a non-game context to

enhance user engagement. It is a powerful tool to take and keep people’s attention
and to engage people with their peers and activities to reach desired outcomes.
Gamification also refers to the use of game elements in a non-game context to
increase engagement between humans and computers, as well as solve problems
with high quality, as exemplified by modern electronic applications.

There are few things to consider when designing gamification activities for
instructor. First at all, introduce the gamification elements to students before start the
class and provide gamification tool for teaching and learning. Second, create variety
of game design in order to enhance student engagement. Third, aim to incorporate
as many gamification activities as possible either in individual task or team.

To conclude, gamification is an approach that needs interactive activity to

engage student learning. In fact, designing and applying gamification in teaching and
learning will help learners to learn better and increase learning engagement.
Article Review 5

Title: "Gamification in Education," in Learning Theories

Author: David L (2016)

This article tell that gamification in learning involves incorporating game

elements to motivate learners. Elements to motivate learner are narrative, immediate
feedback, fun, “Scaffolded learning" with challenges, mastery (for example, in the
form of leveling up), progress indicators (for example, through
points/badges/leaderboards, also called PBLs), social connection and player control.

Benefits to gamification in education are students will feel ownership over their
learning. There are more fun in the classroom. Learning becomes visible through
progress indicators. The students may uncover intrinsic motivation for learning.
Students can explore different identities through different character and often are
more comfortable in gaming environments.

There are three main ways that gamification can be applied to a learning
environment. These include adapting grades, changing the classroom language, and
modifying the structure of the class. Instead of solely using letter grades, there might
be a ladder of experience points (XP) that the student climbs.
Article Review 6

Title: The Unstoppable Growth of Gamification and Digital Learning Games in

Education

Author: Gamelearn (2016)

This article tell gamification in education has always been present with the goal
of boosting motivation and making learning a fun and effective process. In 2010, 47%
of teachers claimed to use online videos in their lessons, a figure that rises to 68% in
2015. The sudden rise of academic interest by teachers in the use of videogames
and game-based learning could mean a new awakening in digital learning.

In fact, to implement game-based learning remains a challenge in many schools.

Many educators and experts emphasize the long way to go to get teachers to change
their teaching methods. Experts agree that the key to finding the best games to learn
is to consider those who teach students in innovative ways, rather than those which
simply repeat traditional exercises in a digital environment.

Games are a great asset when it comes to providing students with multiple ways
of learning. Games are engages which improves retention of learned content by a
90%, thanks to the adventure aspect, which turns learning into an entertaining and
appealing activity for the student. Videogame can help students to relax and improve
their self-confidence improves by a 20% compared to other learning methods. It
improves performance. Game dynamics motivate the student, increasing their
performance and improving skill development by a 20%.
Article Review 7

Title : Gamification and Learning Performance; A Systematic Review of the

Literature

Author : Ortiz-Rojas, Margarita (2017)

This article tells about the review available studies on gamification, with an
exclusive focus on learning performance as the key dependent variable. There are
further inclusion and exclusion criteria regarding setting of education, study focus
(empirical), journal access and dependent variables that focus on learning
performance.

The analysis of these article showed how gamification could be linked to a direct
increase in learning performance among students. Nevertheless, some studies also
reflect weaker statistical differences between being involved or not in a gamified
environment. The review analysis results are especially helpful to define a future
agenda for gamification research, addressing the following gaps in the literature.

One of the systematic review of the literature is that to include mediating and
moderating variables to find more empirical research that can prove an indirect effect
of gamification on learning performance. Second, carry out the additional research
that empirically underpins the direct linkage between gamification and learning
performance. Third, include the specific individual gamification elements to be able to
determine explicit differential effects of these elements on learning performance.
Fourth, conduct research in a broader range of knowledge fields to develop empirical
evidence in the context of other knowledge domains next to computer sciences.
Finally, consider involving larger sample and setting up longer experimental
inventions, to avoid novelty effects and risks of lack of generalization.

The main goal of ths article was to explore about gamification with a clear
focus on effects as to academic performance. Overall, adding gamification elements
shows a promising increase in learning performance taking into consideration a more
controlled design in terms of sample, variables, length among others.
Article Review 8

Title: Gamification in Education

Author: Gabriela Kiryakova, Nadezhda Angelova, and Lina Yordanova (2013)

This article reviews the gamification definition, the difference between

gamification and a serious game, gamification function in education, and lastly it is
also told of some examples of gamification equipment. In general, Gamification
means "using game-based mechanics, aesthetics and game thinking to engage
people, motivate action, promote learning, and solve problems." Gamification is not
just used in education, it is also used in areas where others. Easily, gamification is an
integration of game elements and game thinking in activities that are not games.

There are also several differences between Gamification and serious game.
Gamification is the use of game metaphors, game elements and ideas in a context
different from that of the games in order to increase motivation and commitment, and
to influence user behavior (Marczewski, 2013). Game inspired design is the use of
ideas and ways of thinking that are inherent in games. Game inspired design does
not express in adding game elements, but rather in using of playful design. Serious
games are games designed for a specific purpose related to training, not just for fun.
Simulations are similar to serious games, but they simulate real-world things and
their purpose is user training in an environment resembling real life. Games include
everything mentioned above and they are designed for entertainment.

This article also mentions some of the functions of gamification in education.

Gamification can improve the abilities to learn new skills by 40%. In addition, to
improving the ability to learn new skills, gamification can also encourage students to
engage in the learning process in the classroom. Through gamification, teachers will
be more likely to track their student's progress. In education tracking the students'
progress is essential to achieve the learning objectives.

In this article also describes how this gamification is used in the learning
process. Teachers need to know the characters of their students as it allows teachers
to identify whether this learning method is effective on their students' academic
performance. Additionally, learning objectives must also be related to the games that
pupils will play. Teachers also need to know the right games method to enable
learning objectives achieved such as using playable games repeatedly, solving, and
having certain difficulty levels to enable students to sharpen their students' thinking
skills.
Article Review 9

Title: Using Gamification to Teach Students Programming

Author: Rania Elshiekh, Laurie Butgerit (2017)

This article show gamification is the use of game concepts in a non-gaming

environment. It is used in many fields such as business, health and education. The
problem of learning programming language has existed for a long time and
researchers seek to solve this problem. Most instructors agree that there is a
problem when teaching programming and many students are unable to understand
programming logic. So there must be a method to encourage them. Students need to
be motivated to practise study and exchange ideas.

Gamification is used as a tool to motivate students and increase their

engagement. The concept of gamification has been around for many years, but the
word “gamification” is rather new. It appeared in 2010. Gamification means the use of
game thinking, game elements, game techniques, game methodologies, and game
framework in a non-game context in order to motivate users, solve problems,
increase user experience, and encourage good desired behaviours . Gamification is
used in many fields such as marketing to encourage customers as well as in
employment to motivate employees.

Redfield has experience with using gamification technique in teaching students

the beginning of computer programming. In this model students play games, evaluate
games, and present, demonstrate and create games. Using games in education
support learning and retention, but this requires an excellent instructor to develop
games including principles and processes. This can be applied effectively to learning
process.

This paper surveys empirical studies which tackled gamification to encourage

computer science students and help them in learning coding or improving their
coding skills. The paper will show the results of using this approach with computer
science students at university level.
Article Review 10
Title: The Flipped Classroom Experience of Gamified

Author: Tae Matsumoto

There has recently been growing interest in the area of gamification, the
application of game elements to non-game contexts. This concept has been put to
use in several different fields, one such field being education. What is good about
game-informed learning is that when conditions are satisfied, learners can enhance
their intrinsic motivation towards goal achievement. For the purpose of the study, two
types of discussion were utilized: gamification and flipped classroom.

The flipped classroom used technology to access the lecture and other
instructional resources outside the class- room. This paper proposes the flipped
classroom support methods using the Gamification. In order to discuss the pros and
cons of gamification of education, the authors conducted an experiment and
questionnaire using flipped classroom with gamification elements for English as
foreign language education. The results of this study particularly highlighted the
importance of well-de- signed tutorial, task, interface and feedback for the effective
game-based e-learning. It is an inverted version of the traditional learning model.

The flipped classroom is becoming increasingly well known around the

University education in Japan. It has become a new way of teaching approach. The
flipped classrooms are able to remodel large lecture classes into active-learning.
Active learning is a key aspect of the flipped classroom. In flipped classrooms,
students watch videos and online lectures outside of class, and valuable class time is
used to solve problems and apply concepts. It should also be added that the flipped
classroom model is a blended learning strategy.

However, it is still at the early stage in Japan. As a reason for this might be the
lack of good quality electronic learning materials and teaching method. In addition,
according to the drop out white paper, the number of university student is dropout
increases rapidly and it becomes a big problem in recent years. In the background of
such an awareness of the issues, I suggest that instructional design framework.
Article Review 11

Title: The gamification of education

Author: Tom Bennett (2013)

This article talks about the gamification in learning. Games provide complex
systems of rules for players to explore through active experimentation and discovery.
For example, the apparently simple mobile game Angry Birds asks players to knock
down towers by launching birds out of a slingshot. In short, players’ desire to beat
each level makes them small-scale experimental physicists.

These techniques, applied to schools, can transform student perspectives on

learning. Gamification can help students ask, ‘If I want to master school, what do I do
next?’ Crucially, they also help players persist through negative emotional
experiences and even transform them into positive ones. Developing a strong school-
based identity helps engage students with learning in the long run. However, many
students do not feel like they can ‘do school’. for these students, gamified
environments can provide an opportunity to try on the unfamiliar identify of a scholar.

Video games, if effectively harnessed, are in ideal platform for learning. Unlike
film or television or other linear media even books, games are interactive. They’re
participatory. You lean forward, not back. Games let people step into other shoes,
make decisions, explore the consequences. In games, the player has agency, which
is very, very powerful. Games are participatory. You’re interacting, which is very, very
powerful. Games are adaptive. They’re personalised. You can go at your own pace,
advance at your own pace. They’re scaffolded for folks who go slower. So in many
way, the platform itself is perfectly set up for effective learning.