Development of Students’ Skills through Gamification and Serious Games: An Exploratory Study

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The paper presents the European Framework for Digital Comptence of Educators and proposes a mapping of its digital skills to specific gamification tools and serious games. This is an interesting topic, however, I have major concerns about methodological issues and the actual contribution of this work in the field.

The authors simple state that "a systematic search for serious games has been carried out".

Does this mean that a systematic literature review was carried out? Based on the references that are in their majority hyperlinks I suppose not.

What databases and/or search engines were used?

What was the search string/keywords?

How many serious games and gamification tools did the authors find and how did they select the specific ones among all the available games (that are numerous)?

What were the inclusion and exclusion criteria?

Th authors have to elaborate on the methodology of the study.

Moreover, it would be both interesting and importan to present actual research data about the usage of the proposed serious games and gamification tools, as well as the way they are actually used (good practices, difficulties for using them in classroom etc.) and what is their impact on students' digital skills.  Currently, I consider the contribution of the work limited and more work should be done in this field.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

The paper presents an analysis between serious games and gamification with a group of tools and their relationship between the Digital Competencies for Educators and defined areas by the European Commission. The paper shows the differences/similarities between serious games and gamification.

 

However, the title and the abstract are a little confusing to the reader, because they are the sensation of some study case and analysis will be done with students, about their digital skills using gamification.

   

Section 3: the systematic search for serious games -> where is it done? In which databases? Sites? Systems? What are the metrics for this search? (tables 2 and 3). It is the kernel of the paper and must be clear where and how the tools were chosen.

 

Why tutorials (T1) are considered? They did not appear in serious games or gamification.... who defined this classification (T1.. T6)?

 

And the conclusions must be improved, to present the limitation of this study as well as its future steps.

 

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Dear Authors,

Thank you for submitting your paper on the development of students' digital skills through gamification. The paper presents a good framework and detailed analysis, but there are some minor comments to be made.

 

Points in favor:

Presents a good framework and detailed analysis.

 

Points against:

Restructuring the paper is necessary to improve readability.

 

Detailed feedback:

 

Title:

Suggest being more specific and avoiding a question. A title like "Developing Students' Digital Skills through Gamification: An Exploratory Study" could be useful.

 

Abstract:

The first sentence looks too broad and could be revised. The phrase "pedagogical methodologies linked to new technologies" could be simplified to "technology-based teaching methods" for clarity.

 

Introduction:

The first paragraph is too generic. Sections 1.1 and 1.2 could be moved to a background section in the related work section, including the current section 2. Please focus on the research questions and objectives rather than spending too much effort on how COVID changed our lives. Your objectives could include:

(1) Analysis of the European Framework for Digital Competence of Educators

(2) Utilization of resources in terms of gamification tools and serious games.

 

Related work:

Section 3 could be named "Related Work" and include the authors' related work. The authors mentioned "A systematic search for serious games has been carried out...", but the method used and how it was aligned with the research questions is unclear. The search may be too broad, so please specify the method, research questions, and possible keywords. Please provide context for serious games before detailing them.

 

Methodology:

The methodology section is short. Please detail how you came to the details in Table 4. Which approach was used? Section 4 looks like a methodology and result at the same time, so please restructure the paper accordingly.

 

Discussion:

Please remove generic sentences, such as those found in the first paragraph, regarding technology.

The definitions, characteristics, and types of gamification and serious games are not clear.

To effectively incorporate gamification and serious games into education, it is necessary to provide teacher training on these techniques, as they need to integrate and practice them in their pedagogical practice. Please provide context for this point.

Please structure this section into at least two sections focusing on your research objectives. For example, gamification tools/serious educational resources and resource adaptability.

 

Conclusion:

Please revise for more concise and direct-to-the-point conclusions rather than summary-based conclusions.

 

Please add a section for implications to theory and practice and another section on threats to validity.

 

Minor:

Please follow the journal format and revise the figure captions for grammatical correctness.

 

Thank you again for your contribution.

 

 

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 4 Report

This paper is focused on a very relevant topic: the use of serious games and gamification as a drive for achieving the competences defined in the EU frameworks.

The introduction section presents very goos insights on digital competencies and the EU frameworks. And makes good insights on gamification and serious games. This part should be revised so that the authors propose clearly how they distinguish between serious games, as games developed to achieve certain goals that are not just entertainment, from gamification, which is design technique: gameful design. The paper from Deterding (2011) is clear in the distinguishing both and also makes a good distinction between gameful design and playful design. The section title should also change to incorporate this duality.

The title of the article should also include "game-based" or "serious hames in the title, to clarify the focus on both areas.

Section 2 presents the DigCompEdu framework that is going to drive the evaluation of the tools under revision on the next section (3 - "gamification tools and serious games"). The title should actually be "gamified tools and serious games" (not "gamification").

But we missed a "materials and methods tools" section that clarifies in more detail the methodological design of this study.

Section 4 describes the analysis of the tools evaluated mapped in the DigCompEdu framework.

The discussion section and the conclusions are well written and structured providing relevant insights.

Overall, a relevant work that should be improved with minor changes.

 

 

 

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

The authors have tried to deal with the review comments and I would like to thank them for their efforts. Some major issues commented in the original review have been dealt with and although there is room for improvemnt, this would require a more rigorous methodology from the first place. In any case, the work presented has merit and could be accepted.